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Rating: Well, yes! I too was a fan of the woeful My Dying Bride! Then what exactly happened? Ah yes! It happened that, for a long series of reasons, that dark and monolithic sound began to seem far too melodramatic and whiny to me.
Let's be clear: albums like "As The Flowers Withers" and "The Angel And The Dark River" remain milestones in the death-doom genre! I consider the controversial "34.788%.. Complete" a brave attempt at renewal, but what the dying bride released with immense effort from '98 onwards has always seemed to me too tied to boring and moldy clichés.
"Songs Of Darkness, Words Of Light" clearly expresses this chronic lack of ideas. The usual riffs, slow and depressive, the usual voice halfway between a metallic growler and a Nick Cave (latest style, of course!!), Martin Powell's magical violin replaced by gaudy keyboards and lyrics that, in hindsight, make you laugh out loud!
Was I a bit too mean? Not at all. Take the lyrics of "My Wine In Silence" and, after reading them carefully, tell me why a cursed poet like Aaron Staintrope has resorted to writing such trivialities! Money? Not at all! It's more about compositional sterility.
If "The Dreadful Hours" had some interesting elements, listening to this little album we are faced with a disheartening attempt to "recover" sounds already proposed and widely experimented with during the nineties. "My Wine In Silence", as previously highlighted, but also tracks like "Catherine Blake" and "The Wrekage Of My Flesh" add nothing new and indeed make us doubt quite a bit about the band's state of health.
A couple of nice tracks are there ("The Blue Lotus" and "A Doomed Lover"), but the atmosphere of compositional "disillusionment" that reigns supreme does not favor the listening of this release.
Katatonia and Anathema have managed to renew themselves. Maybe not always convincingly, that's true, but they've done it with courage and maturity. Unfortunately, the Bride preferred to tread the usual ground, and this choice, in the long run, has proven to be unconvincing.
A real shame!
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
03 Catherine Blake (06:36)
So vile men's torment was truly a pleasure
A plain that would change mankind for ever more
Catherine Blake slept fitfully in the
summer night. In the heat.
She murmured gently and moved smoothly,
this way and that. Oh, the beauty.
Her luscious eyes, delicate fingers,
clawed at her sodden bed.
Catherine smiled. Took a fabulous breath
of summer air and tasted death.
Die Erorians' visit had been successful rewarding.
With night of female screams of whimpers,
lustful dreams.
Night followed rampant night of
delicate soft gasps.
The ultimate attack on Heaven and it's glories.
Seduce them as they slept, oblivious to
their midnight tryst.
The seed of doom was planted.
Phantom raped in their dreams.
The sad ones take their own lives.
Slay their men night after night.
Catherine Blake dreamt of a horror.
Of passion too and of terror.
Over her silent breast, shadows swept,
shades caressed.
Motherhood was destroyed by the seed
and laid to waste.
A great rift was born. Men and the
world were torn.
The daggers went in deep, vile and sickening.
Women swept awat all infancy from their wombs.
And still the Lord God remained silent,
no utterance, no movement, no tears.
The earth became red.
The cutting machines of man.
Disgust and hatred for the lives of woman.
The butchery, the savagery,did spill
unto themselves.
A chorus of agony from Heaven and Rain poured
In a colossus of angels tears.
The creature of all sins. The lord of the
bleakest abode.
Did wonder at the silence.
What did the Almighty know?
All Hell did fill with the screaming souls
of dead men.
The mighty army of God did stand and wait,
Hoping our lord would unleash them all.
The great fiery pit. Hordes ripped apart.
Chaos ensued, screaming from the dark.
Observing his darkened child, in the miserable
corners of earth
The great heart of God will heal up the earth.
The Lord watched as his beloved slipped silently
Back into the darkness below.
06 The Blue Lotus (06:37)
Under the darkened, Ancient oak
Gentle in the nights breeze
I stop and stare, rest a while
With hands upon my knees
Through jaded leaves, bush and scrub
I spy my journeys end
Black it looms, silent gloom
The castle called Avend
On I trot, past forest eyes
Past horrors of the night
Through the dark, I see a sign
A gentle glowing light
Upon reaching the castle I ascend the ivy
Towards the golden window
My heart pounds my breath is rushed
As I fight both brick and branch
The ledge is mine and over I sweep
Silent like the falling snow
Quiet, I slip across the polished floor
Tonight, I will dine with chance
The Blue Lotus, a legend, I thought a myth
Old poems and stories gone
A beauty of unimaginable lust
Both men's hearts, and Gods, were won
Skin like milk, an angels face
Thay say her smile could kill
Her hair the blackest of all black
Stories I thought Though, still
So there she lay spleeping upon the bed
Half covered by fantastic silks
Her breast I see, moves with her dreams
A sight I will always recall
A single candle that showed me the way
Through forest, river and hills
Glows upon that lovely skin
Shadows dancing aroun the walls
Closer I creep, toward my prize
The Blue Lotus lies before me
Her lips are full, red as blood
Moist as they invite me
Stoop I did to kiss those lips
In that glowing room
When suddenly, she did awake,
Her eyes filled with doom
From silks, her hands were round my neck
Escape there was no hope
A brief flash of teeth is all I saw
And gone was my throat
Her bloodlust deep, she swallowed me
Red was all I saw
She drank her fill and watched me fall
Gently to the floor
A league away my death is found
By locals who tens this land
Who lay me down in shllow earth
A single Lotus placed in my hand
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Other reviews
By Norvheim
Never before has the band managed to convey such dark and claustrophobic atmospheres as with this album.
Every single note... is like a stabbing pain in the stomach for its heaviness, obsessiveness, and despair.
