ALBUM REVIEW: The Ghost of Orion – My Dying Bride

Few bands have done as much for doom metal within the UK as MY DYING BRIDE. Now approaching their 30^th anniversary, they have been prolific in their building of the genre on this dysfunctional island since the beginning of their careers and have remained a household attraction throughout. Today marks the release of thirteenth studio album The Ghost of Orion via Nuclear Blast, their first album in five years – their longest stretch between releases – and the debut appearances on record of drummer Jeff Singer and guitarist Neil Blanchett, who replaced Shaun Taylor-Steels and Calvin Robertshaw in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

By now, there is absolutely no point in deviating too far from what MY DYING BRIDE have been so excellent at over the past three decades, so the slow and measured pace of opening track (and lead single) Your Broken Shore is the musical equivalent of slipping on your favourite pair of shoes; it’s comforting, familiar and serves as a welcoming, entrance hall to the stately home the band have worked hard to craft over all these years. To Outlive the Gods keeps the momentum going and is a song to sit back and appreciate as it flows over you and you marvel at just how MY DYING BRIDE are still creating songs of the highest quality in a period where they could easily rest on their laurels and go through the motions. That quality only increases with Tired of Tears, a strong lament that sees founder and vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe bemoan the protagonist’s current position and wishing they could stop crying, whilst The Solace strips everything back to just guitars and the haunting voice of bassist Lena Abé, painting a bleak and vulnerable landscape that does much to captivate.

The back half of the album has a more intriguing makeup: two long epics and two much shorter interludes. The Long Black Island brings the full band back in and is probably the heaviest song in terms of musicianship sprawling impressively across its ten minutes. The title track follows this and, in direct contrast, is much cleaner in tone, but the whispered, disjointed vocals that dart around retain the spectral overtones impressively, ensuring the listener remains on edge for the longest track on the record – the ten and a half minute The Old Earth. As grand as The Long Black Island before it, this time it delves into blackened doom territory as Stainthorpe unleashes the power of his unclean vocals for the majority of the song, bringing the darkness in tighter and closer than has been heard before on the album. What follows is interesting – the final song, Your Woven Shore, actually brings a glimmer of hope into the mix. Not only does the title suggest that what was once broken can be mended and made stronger, but the overall composition of choir voices and strings from violinist Shaun MacGowan sound almost positive, a curious way to end an album stuffed to the gills with melancholy and misery.

Taking half a decade between releases has played into MY DYING BRIDE’s favour – absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say, so to have new material for the first time in such a long while means The Ghost of Orion hits harder than if it had come out a few years before. In any event, what a privilege to have a band of such magnitude still producing the goods after all this time; a world without them seems almost implausible.

Rating: 8/10

The Ghost of Orion is out now via Nuclear Blast Records. 

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