EP REVIEW: Macabre Cabaret – My Dying Bride

Just a few short months since they released the rather excellent The Ghost of Orion, the masters of all things doomy and gloomy MY DYING BRIDE are returning with a new EP, Macabre Cabaret. Just three songs long but clocking in at twenty minutes, it stays true to their well-established formula of expansive songs stuffed to the brim with melancholic croons and nihilistic roars. 

The first track on the EP is the title track which sits at a lengthy ten minutes. As you’d expect, it’s a dirge fit for a funeral. The melodic croons are reminiscent of liturgical chanting and the glacial pace allows the sadness to seep into every pore. Follow-up A Secret Kiss is more immediate – though this is still doom we’re talking about – with riffs taking centre stage initially. Before long, Aaron Stanthorpe’s roar releases the tension that has been building over the past ten-plus minutes. 

This is MY DYING BRIDE exactly as you know them; operatic, haunting atmospheres and monstrously heavy. Unfortunately it’s not all up to their usual standard – closer A Purse of Gold and Stars is a painful listen, with the vocal rhythms being a particular pain point and Stanthorpe’s stretching out of the word labyrinth is especially bad for this. Given the entire song has its vocals done as spoken word passages in this style it is a major letdown after the quality of the preceding tracks. 

With such a short time between this and their rather excellent recent album, if there weren’t a global pandemic keeping bands off the road it would be surprising to have new music from MY DYING BRIDE, especially with the five year wait for The Ghost of Orion. It’s apparent, however, that a little more gestation time would have made this EP a far more compelling listen. Or at the very least, the removal of the final track would ensure this release didn’t have such a drastic drop in quality at the end. Still, as a wise man once said, two out of three ain’t bad. 

Rating: 6/10

Macabre Cabaret is out now via Nuclear Blast Records. 

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