Review by Daniel for My Dying Bride - As the Flower Withers (1992)

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.