My Dying Bride - For Lies I Sire (2009)^{Release ID: 969}

My Dying Bride's tenth full length album has its moments, but it falls short of their best work.

For Lies I Sire was always going to be a significant release for My Dying Bride. Not only is it the band’s tenth full length studio album, it also reintroduces the violin into their sound for the first time in over a decade. There’s no doubt that Martin Powell helped to create My Dying Bride’s identity back in the early nineties, with his violin work adding a unique and emotionally impacting element to their gloomy brand of death doom metal. Yet since his departure after 1996’s Like Gods of the Sun, despite still managing to record several excellent albums, this distinctive component had been sadly missing. When Sarah Stanton, who had been the Brit’s keyboardist since around 2002, announced she was pregnant at the start of 2008, the need to find a replacement carried with it the opportunity to bring this facet back to the My Dying Bride sound. Enter Katie Stone, a talented young woman with many strings to her bow, including the ability to perform keyboards, flute, vocals and violin. When the band entered the studio in September 2008 to record For Lies I Sire, it would not only be Katie’s first foray with My Dying Bride, it would also be the first studio album that bassist Lena Abé and drummer Dan Mullins had taken part in (they’d both performed for the Ode to Woe live album however). The question was, would all these changes stop the band from continuing their fantastic late career resurgence? I sure hoped not!

I learnt a valuable lesson with My Dying Bride’s previous album A Line of Deathless Kings. After one or two listens I was convinced that the band had created a boring, uninspired piece of work. Yet after resolving to give it a few more spins before reviewing it, I all of a sudden found myself enjoying it quite a lot. The band’s shift away from the heavy darkness of The Dreadful Hours and Songs of Darkness, Words of Light had initially been disappointing, but once I accepted that change, the more traditional doom metal riffs and the soaring nature of Aaron’s decreased vocal dimensions really took hold. It’s a lesson I applied to For Lies I Sire and the exact same process transpired. I had very little emotional connection during my first couple of listens to the album, yet with each subsequent run through I’ve found more and more thoroughly enjoyable sections to hold onto. While the earlier and more widely praised albums hit their marks immediately, with blatantly dark, haunting atmospheres and heart-wrenching melodies, latter day My Dying Bride is a more subtle affair, planting seeds that take a small amount of dedication before they sprout into something no less beautiful. I think For Lies I Sire’s mixed reception from fans has a lot to do with this lack of immediacy, and while I’m not suggesting that those who rate it harshly have lacked the patience necessary to discover its finer details, I am going to recommend that fans give this album a few solid listens before writing it off.

All of the above being said there is unquestionably something missing from For Lies I Sire that would have raised it above merely enjoyable. I’m not sure whether it’s the production that’s to blame, with the low-end almost completely missing and the guitars lacking real force, or whether it’s just that there are no five star classic tracks to be found. Each and every track has its moments of My Dying Bride bliss, with Santuario Di Sangue (that chorus kills me every time), Bring Me Victory (great driving drumming by Dan) and ShadowHaunt (a beautiful build up that really pays off) reaching the highest peaks, yet almost all of them contain at least one section where it appears the band is merely treading water. The added violin element does work quite nicely, but it’s used rarely and never as a leading instrument, so it’s hard to get too excited about it. It was also a bit surprising to find possibly the most brutal track My Dying Bride have produced in over a decade, on an album that’s one of the softest of their career. A Chapter in Loathing stands out like a sore thumb and while it’s not at all a bad attempt at reintroducing the death metal of yesteryear, its place on For Lies I Sire just feels...wrong. In spite of all the flaws I’ve just mentioned, I still find a lot to like on For Lies I Sire, and I’m not willing to write this amazing band off just yet. They’ve rarely let me down in the twenty years since their inception, and I still look forward to their albums with just as much anticipation as I always have.