My Dying Bride prefers to call thier music "Doom Metal", and MDB fans hate it when you call this band "Gothic Metal"...but in truth, either tag applies. Whatever you want to call it...it's an amazing album. I love it's slow and melodic atmosphere...ultra darkness. If your looking for deathmetal...there are a few traces of that here. This isn't a speedy or hard hitting power band....this is just sheer dark metal that evokes darke desire and invites deep emotional response. IMO, this is one of the most unique band in metal culture.

It's that time again. Time to take another dive into the very deepest pits of dread and despair. Time to unleash a monolithic slab of Gothic Horror upon the unsuspecting masses. It is...a new My Dying Bride album.

This, quite simply, is Doom Metal at its finest. Slow, ultra-heavy riffs. Tortured vocals speaking of death and despair. An atmosphere of utter gloom and hopelessness. Contrary to the album title, there's very little "light" in these words. Like all My Dying Bride albums, it's slow, somber, occasionally malevolent, and throughout, miserably depressing. Of the original "Big Three" of Doom Metal, including Paradise Lost and Anathema, only My Dying Bride continue to play actual Doom Metal, a fact we can all be thankful for.

"Songs of Darkness, Words of Light" begins with "The Wreckage of my Flesh" which is quintessential Doom Metal. Throughout the album, one finds only more darkness, with subjects ranging from lost love ("My Wine in Silence", "A Doomed Lover"), apocalyptic imagery ("Catherine Blake") to good old fashioned Gothic Horror ("The Blue Lotus"). Quite possibly this is their bleakest album yet; even more so than 2001's "The Dreadful Hours". The tone is consistent throughout; the band's fans wouldn't have it any other way.

Guitarists Andy Craighan and Hamish Glencross lay down boulder-sized riffs, which, thanks to the excellent production, really do sound heavy as a ton of bricks. Keyboardist Sarah Stanton provides subtle atmospheric synthesizer effects, which perfectly accentuate the bleak tone of the album. Vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe ranges from a snarly growl, to an ominous, spoken-word delivery, to a sort of despairing moan, sometimes all within the same song. The lyrics, as always, are wonderfully poetic, and far from the cliched "angst" that you might hear in mainstream "dark rock" (to take a very deserved swipe at Evanescence).

Naturally, My Dying Bride has never been the easiest band to acquire a taste for. But for the more darkly inclined, do yourself a favor and pick this CD up, because the masses will NEVER understand anything as gloomy, depressing, and downright un-trendy as this.

The problem with My Dying Bride is that my expectations are always obscenely high for everything they release. I expect it to be the best album of the year! This sort of expectation, more often than not, only leads to disappointment (at least with other bands).

"Songs of Darkness, Words of Light" is My Dying Bride's 8th studio album. When I first came across the band in the early nineties, I'm pretty sure I would have done anything at all to make the band successful enough to last this long. What's even more impressive is the fact that every one of the bands releases (15 in all!) have been released through Peaceville. It's rare that this sort of loyalty (from both parties) is displayed in this day and age.

Let's talk about the album. This is one dark recording! From the very outset, "The Wreckage of my Flesh" displays a real fierce darkness. A sort of brooding menace, that hardly declines for the entire album. The first track is truly awesome, and a great sign of things to come. My Dying Bride really know how to start their albums, always using the first few minutes to create the exact sort of mood and atmosphere that they want to encapsulate the next hour or so. There is never any doubt who you are listening to, which is one of the amazing things about this UK outfit. They sound truly unique, and have done so for over ten years.

Other than the darkness that I mentioned previously, "Songs of Darkness, Words of Light" follows on from "The Dreadful Hours" without changing the formula too much. Don't expect any big surprises, just expect doom/death epic tracks that pull at your heart-strings and crush you simultaneously, without ever moving into cheesy gothic territory. While other bands using keyboards can move into this territory, My Dying Bride is just so heavy. They know exactly what to do, and when to do it, to get the most out of each track.

I really feel that this is vocalist Aaron's finest work to date. He has so many different styles of singing, from tender moments of vulnerability, convincing spoken word, a black metal like scream, and powerful roars of anger. He really displays all his talent throughout the album, with "The Prize of Beauty" being a perfect example of his range and ability. He is completely captivating at all times, and throughout all these differing styles and emotions, he never becomes undecipherable. I find myself singing along to every song without ever having looked at the lyrics.

The highlights of the album are "The Wreckage of my Flesh", "The Scarlet Garden", "My Wine in Silence" and "A Doomed Lover". I have read a few times recently about "My Wine in Silence" being a commercial sounding track that could break the band into the mainstream. The track is a slow, mellow piece that you could call a ballad, but there are still distorted scream-like vocals at times, as well as some truly miserable lyrics of despair. If I turned on my local radio station and heard My Dying Bride emitting from my sound system, I think I would drop dead on the spot!

My final piece of praise, before I let you all go off and buy the album, is left for the final track. "A Doomed Lover" is an absolutely devouring, genius piece of depressive art. It's right up there with the best work the band has ever done, and a magnificent finale for "Songs of Darkness, Words of Light".

My high expectations have been met again by My Dying Bride.

my wine in silence...this wasn,t composed by any living mortal...what abyss vomited it out i cannot imagine...you just gave it a name...rapture, a soothing lament for my soul.

this album is so dark,lamenting,sorrowful...beautiful in its uniqueness....

MDB has an impossible standard to live by. Each album that is released is automatically compared to earlier albums instead of being judged and appreciated on its own merit. And if that's not bad enough, they also have that added burden of seemingly having to write music that is conforms to an idealistic expectation. Because they have been so ground-breaking, their fans believe them to be immortal, musical deities free of all human, musical limitation. That is, they can just magically go into a studio and produce a dozen songs of flawless, pefect, unearthly gothic doom metal at will. Well, I'm sure some people will be dissapointed to know that they are only human after all.

And as far as the loss of violin , which some people still can't seem to get over, actually, I'm glad it's gone. Martin masterfully did everything you can possibly do with it in this context. And I've come to the conclusion that being w/o the violin makes them sound slightly different, thus keeping their new albums fresh, while also keeping the violin albums sounding fresh. An added bonus. When you want violin, you listen to the old stuff. Also, I'd like to say Sarah does as great of a job on her synth parts as Martin did on his parts.

As far as I'm concerned they've done something extraordinary: they've survived line-up changes, limited press coverage, the burden of having such a dark, brooding, inaccessible, uncommerial sound, unattainable standards set by too many fans, and managed to have released five albums in about 7 years that sound slightly different than the preceeding one w/o betraying the core of their sound. This album is a worthy addition to their impressive catalog. Exactly where it fits in can be determined only by time..and their next release. If you've never heard MDB before, there's no harm in starting here. That qualities that made them what they are abound on this album.