My Dying Bride - As the Flower Withers (1992)^{Release ID: 960}

Far more death metal influence than on later My Dying Bride material, but an original and underrated debut!

After the staggering Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium EP in 1991, it was yet to be seen whether My Dying Bride could live up to the obvious promise they displayed. After all, it was really only the exceptional title track on that particular release that caused all the excitement, with the other two tracks taking a more traditional death metal path that wasn’t particularly revolutionary. Was that epic track merely a fluke or were we about to experience something truly breathtaking? As the Flower Withers answered the question in no uncertain terms and I thoroughly believe that the album doesn’t get the admiration it deserves for the simple fact that most listeners came across it after hearing the bands later work. There’s absolutely no doubt that Turn Loose the Swans in particular is a far superior album, so anyone listening to As the Flower Withers after experiencing that example of perfection is likely to be a tad disappointed. But when you place this album into its correct context, being that it was released in 1992 when death doom was in its absolute infancy, there’s just no denying that As the Flower Withers is a groundbreaking and classic album.

My Dying Bride were very much still a death metal band at this stage and were still figuring out the best ways to combine their ambitious mixture of heavy doom metal, raw death metal, classical elements, guttural vocals and surprisingly poetic lyrics. Probably the thing that makes As the Flower Withers stand out from the band’s later efforts is the production. It’s raw and dirty which certainly aren’t words you could apply to modern My Dying Bride, but it works quite well given the more death metal influenced material here. The guitars have a lot of weight to them and Aaron’s vocals are as vicious as they would ever be. Unfortunately, the drum sound is not ideal and given Rick’s rather pedestrian performance, come across as very flat throughout. The violins on the other hand have an immense impact every time they are utilised. Martin Powell was not an official member of the band at this stage but his presence is felt in a huge way, particularly on the three epics of the album, Sear Me, The Bitterness and the Bereavement and The Return of the Beautiful. There’s no doubt that this aspect helped make My Dying Bride so exciting, so it was no surprise that the band recruited him full time for the next album.

As with the EP, As the Flower Withers excels when the band ramp up the atmosphere and let the gothic flourishes kick in. The Return of the Beautiful is undoubtedly the highlight and it’s no surprise that the band chose to re-record this track on The Dreadful Hours. Interestingly, the final track Erotic Literature was originally a bonus track found on the CD and cassette versions of the album, but it seems to be considered part of the official track listing these days. Even the My Dying Bride official homepage has it listed as part of the album with not mention of it being a bonus track, so I guess it should be included when reviewing As the Flower Withers. I personally think the album functions better when finishing with The Return of the Beautiful, but Erotic Literature doesn’t seem out of place in the slightest and brings things to a close nicely enough. As the Flower Withers doesn't deserve to be considered purely the humble beginnings of a great band. It deserves to be considered a hugely important and successful attempt to do something truly original and an essential part of any death doom metal fan's collection.

As with Anathema whose debut E.P. I revisited only last week, Halifax doom/death legends My Dying Bride can lay claim to providing the soundtrack to a considerable chunk of my youth. Ben & I discovered both bands in the very early stages of their recording careers & would follow them religiously for many years to come. 1992's "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium" was my introduction to My Dying Bride & it flattened me in no uncertain terms so their debut full-length "As The Flower Withers" had a lot to live up to. It's been a while since I've revisited it but all of my recollections indicated that it totally lived up the expectations too, despite often being overlooked in favour of My Dying Bride's impeccable 1993 sophomore album "Turn Loose The Swans" & classy 1995 follow-up "The Angel & the Dark River". Going into this revisit I would have said that that pecking order wasn't all that unfair but I was hopeful that the gap would prove to be a lot smaller than my memory would suggest. That's certainly proven to be the case too with "As The Flower Withers" pleasantly surprising me with just how fully realised it was for such a young band.

The title track from "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium" had seen My Dying Bride touching on a fresh new sound that no one in the extreme metal scene had yet been bold enough to attempt. The use of violin to accentuate its gothic grandeur was nothing short of a masterstroke & would spark a wave of copycats worldwide. None would be able to touch My Dying Bride in their execution however & this element would go on to become the calling card for the band's early works. The other two tracks on the E.P. were vastly different in their structure & style though which begged the question as to what direction the debut full-length would take. Well, what ended up transpiring was a record that still represents a band that's in transition from their early death metal roots into a full-fledged gothic doom metal band. Of the six proper songs included, there are three gargantuan doom/death masterpieces that are similar to "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium" in what they aim to achieve but then we also get some less ambitious & more obviously death metal focused pieces as well as some that fall somewhere in between. The production job is still quite raw which also sees the death metal scene keeping a close watch over My Dying Bride, particularly in regard to the rhythm guitar tone which could have been pulling straight off an Autopsy or Bolt Thrower record. Front man Aaron Stainthorpe's vocal delivery is still limited to his imposing death growl too & I for one are really happy about it as I've always thought Aaron's grunt was one of the more unique & powerful in the extreme metal scene while his clean vocals have sometimes bordered on being whiny & repetitive.

The neoclassical darkwave intro piece "Silent Dance" performs its task brilliantly & leads into one of the band's finest works in the epic "Sear Me" which immediately takes my heart-strings & splays them all over the room. The life-changing "The Bitterness & the Bereavement" & the masterful "The Return of the Beautiful" take a similarly mournful & downtrodden violin-led doom direction & it's this material that categorically proves that My Dying Bride are the real deal when it comes to this subgenre as they've rarely been matched & have never been surpassed by the competition that they were responsible for inspiring in the first place. The more death metal inclined "The Forever People" & "Erotic Literature" aren't nearly as ambitious but aren't anywhere near as magical in their effectiveness either. They're definitely not to be overlooked though as neither could be regarded as being weak as such. It's pretty telling that the doomier parts of both are the most appealing parts of the songs though as it provides clear proof that My Dying Bride were heading in the right direction. "Vast Choirs" kinda sits in the middle ground between the two styles & is not a bad summary of the album really.

Despite the inclusion of some less significant tracks, "As The Flower Withers" is built around & carried by its highlights with the elite material also being by far the longest inclusions. I simply can't fault My Dying Bride while listening to those pieces & feel that the overall album was always destined to achieve one of my higher scores, regardless of how much less impactful the remainder of the record proved to be. The band would veer away from death growls & violins at various stages of their career & I feel that it says a great deal that I've always found those records to be missing something. What it tells me is that My Dying Bride had perfected their sound very early on, at least they had for me personally. As good as "The Angel & the Dark River" was, I can't deny that I favour "As The Flower Withers" over it these days, primarily because it's more closely aligned to my personal taste profile. The debut still offered a gothic feel but it doesn't resort to overly melodramatic emasculation to get there, instead taking a much more muscular yet no less beautiful approach that possesses a timeless quality that sees it aging much better. Fans of Novembers Doom & the early works of Paradise Lost & Anathema simply must own this album because it was as responsible as any of the early doom/death releases for defining the parameters that the subgenre would traverse over the many decades to come.

Me and MDB have a bit of a chequered past. When I was returning to metal in the early 2000s I got hold of mp3 rips of the band's complete discography up to that point (which was up to and including The Dreadful Hours, I think) and I was pretty keen on the Yorkshiremen's sound back then. However, I was playing catch up on the best part of a decade's metal development, during one of it's most evolutionary periods and I found myself exploring alleys and byways that took me further and further from the gothic musings of bands like My Dying Bride and into pastures new. My taste has mutated to such a degree that I am decidedly antipathetical towards what I often now view as the pantomime antics of a lot of gothic and gothic-tinged metal and, unfortunately, MDB singer Aaron Stainthorpe often makes me shake my head at his, what seem to me to be, OTT gothic tendencies, sounding sometimes like he has eaten a full set of Anne Rice novels and washed them down with a collection of Byron's poetry! Contrary to appearances otherwise, I don't hate My Dying Bride, far from it, but I just wish they would rein it in a bit sometimes.

So I decided to go back to MDB's debut full-length in the hopes of rekindling some of that affection I had for them a couple of decades ago now.  I welcome the fact that the album lacks a lot of the overt gothicness (gothicicity?) of a lot of their later material and has quite a raw production. I think it safe to file this under death doom rather than gothic death doom and it even dallies with out and out death metal in places, The Forever People, for example. The more epic tracks such as Sear Me and The Return of the Beautiful, whilst bearing a similar structure to later epics, don't become bogged down by excess gothic window dressing and so retain a vitality and immediacy that a lot of MDB's more grandiose stuff just doesn't possess. They sound like a much more interesting prospect with this stripped-back production style and despite the sparseness of the production they still manage to sound gloriously melancholic. It is as if without all the technical shenanigans and enhanced studio techniques they have to rely more heavily on good, old-fashioned musical ability and songwriting. Generally Stainthorpe sticks to a gruff death metal growl and thankfully we don't get much of the laconic, world-weary vocal style he resorts to in later works that is always guaranteed to wind me up. The guitar riffs are thick and heavy and carry most of the album with their melancholy melodicism and intermittent bursts of aggression. The violin is employed on much rarer occasions than during your average, later MDB album and so is more effective when it does make it's presence felt.

Overall I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I might and this rawer side of My Dying Bride is something I would have loved to have heard more of. I guess this is not a popular opinion, but this is right up there as one of my favourite MDB albums.