Finally the masters of majestic misery are back with their new full length. Last year they’ve released another live album, but it took 3 years to record a new album after the slightly disappointing A Line Of Deathless Kings. The many line-up changes and new band-members are probably the cause of this long delay of a new album, but the wait is over!

My Dying Bride has always been one of my all-time favorite bands around, but the last 5 years I slightly had the feeling they kind of repeated themselves with albums that were a bit inspireless. For instance the release of A Line Of Deathless Kings in 2006. I was anxious to hear if they were moving onto the right path again, with some fresh blood in their ranks. After hearing this album for many times, I’m kind of hopping on two thoughts. There are some really memorable new songs on this album, but also some songs that sound “safe”!

Of course all the typical My Dying Bride elements are there. The poetically dark tales that wade through some heavy, melancholic crushing doom. They are still the absolute masters of misanthropic gloom. You definitely can conclude that this album is a bit harder and straighter forward than the previous albums. There are songs that even have a straight forward death-metal riff in it! And somehow some doom riffs sound more massive than before. A couple of songs even go back to the sound of their debut album As The Flowers Withers. Perhaps the fact that two new female members joined the band has something to do with that. The use of bleak sounding pianos and violins are back as well.

Some highlights of this album are for sure the first song called ‘My Body, A Funeral’; this song has a brilliant massive up-tempo death/doom-metal riff in the middle with some harsh sounding violins on top of that! Or the song ‘Fall With Me’ that has a tremendous thick sounding doom riff in it. Even the more “safe” sounding songs like the title track are still of the highest My Dying Bride quality, but don’t really stand out or anything.

I can recommend every doom freak to buy this new album, it’s a safe purchase you won’t regret. And for the My Dying Bride fans, another essential piece of miserable melancholic doom album by the masters of despair and misery!