Songs Of Darkness, Words Of Light

My Dying Bride's music is best suitable when you're in the mood for it. Through my time of distress and anguish, nights of despair seizing my sanity with doubt, I used to take refuge in music and listen to their depressive music among others till the end of the night. Now that this time is (hopefully) gone forever, I still like to pick up The Angel And The Dark River or Like Gods Of The Sun once in while to remember the bad old days. Songs of Darkness, Words of Light is another album of great depressive music. Except for the 34.788 %... Complete incident, the band always stayed true to their roots, evolving from their doom-death-metal debut to one of the doomiest doom bands on the European scene. Eight slow, but energetic songs for their eighth studio album. Since the release of The Light At The End Of The World, the second U-turn for the band, they didn't find the same chemistry which was theirs on The Angel And The Dark River and Like Gods Of The Sun which gave those albums all their magnificience. Their music remains just as slow and enjoyable, darkened with heavy riffs, depressive but yet easy to listen to without becoming ridiculous or pathetic. Aaron Stainthorpe's unmistakeable emmotional clean whining vocals and death grunts are the trademarks of the band, and it couldn't be any other than those slow, heavy riffs filled with sad melodies and dark atmosphere that could highlight them and vice versa. A bitter taste of déjà-vu remains however constant during the course of the entire album. Had they not committed 34.788 %... Complete, they would have continued to enforce their unique sound to reign over doom metal. Alas the machine got seized up and they still haven't found the right key to restart it. Despite the sadness and loneliness I felt listening to those slow-paced rhythms, I think this album is not comparable to their two mid-nineties masterpieces, but it remains however a good success.