Album review: My Dying Bride – A Mortal Binding

By BRIAN GIFFIN

OVER the past 30 years, My Dying Bride have retained their esteem as a pinnacle of beauty in darkness. Even lesser regarded works are rarely thought of as true disappointments – perhaps only the maudlin and lonely Evinta could genuinely claim that mantle. 

Still, more recent albums have seesawed with the quality of their creative ambition.

With A Mortal Binding, that spark appears to have been well and truly rekindled. Where Feel the Misery felt like a band treading water and Ghost of Orion revelled in melancholia, here they sound revitalised and aggressive, challenging the darkness rather than retreating into it. 

“Her Dominion” enters with a heavy, bitter riff against the sad sawing of violins, Aaron Stainthorpe’s vocals a scathing snarl as My Dying Bride bring back a long-faded death metal aesthetic. Their sense of tragedy still acute, the mournful strings and heartbreaking vocals of “A Thornwyck Hymn” showcase their skilful juxtaposition of sorrow and hope. Unease and discomfiture lie at the heart of “Unthroned Creed” wherein Stainthrope’s whispers import true dread. There is, indeed, a sense of genuine emotion throughout, especially from the vocalist, that lifts A Mortal Binding beyond the melodramatics of much of their later work and gives this work a sense of real menace. 

“The Apocalyptist” is perhaps the stand out call back to their dark past. A sprawling epic of ebb and flow, Stainthorpe’s sinister growl, heavily distorted riffing and vicious, pummelling drumming from Dan Mullins pulling together to make this the most ‘classic’ doom-death track the grand innovators have created for many years.

A Mortal Binding isn’t so much My Dying Bride reinventing themselves as it is a re-discovery of their prowess in the exploration of the beauty of darkness, a reaffirmation of their Baroque majesty. Given the turmoil in the band at present, one can only hope this is not the end, but the beginning of a Renaissance.

Buy A Mortal Binding on vinyl and CD