Band:	My Dying Bride
Album:	For Lies I Sire
Style:	Death doom metal, Gothic doom metal
Release date:	March 20, 2009
A review by:	jupitreas

01. My Body, A Funeral
02. Fall With Me
03. The Lies I Sire
04. Bring Me Victory
05. Echoes From A Hollow Soul
06. ShadowHaunt
07. Santuario Di Sangue
08. A Chapter In Loathing
09. Death Triumphant

Look, I just cut myself, this violin sounds like a razor blade slicing my arteries. Now let me read some Shakespeare to you. Pain. Suffering. My ex-girlfriend. Religion. Violins as razors again. Crimson red drops of blood meandering like the wine from the Holy Grail. Your ex-girlfriend. Pain. Violins. Shakespeare. Latin references, look how deep I am. Bleeding love. Now look, I'm angry for a moment!!! Speed. I'm angry!!! AAAAA... OK, now, I'm sad again. Depression. Shattered passion. Violins. Pain. Goodbye.

Come on, we all know this is precisely what My Dying Bride does on every single album including the more experimental ones. If this is your kind of thing, For Lies I Sire will be right up your alley, just like all the other albums by this band. It's not my kind of thing though. To me, pseudo-romantic, overwrought whining like this is quite annoying, frankly. Truly depressed people don't broadcast their pathetic stories in 10 albums, don't recite Shakespearean poetry and don't threaten to commit suicide. They just fucking do it. Preferably in an amusing way, such as by jumping from a building on an old lady. Or by running into a mall with dynamite up their ass. Life is just a cruel joke anyway, right? Well, laugh at this, society!

For Lies I Sire is the first My Dying Bride album to feature violins since Like Gods Of The Sun and as a consequence sounds quite similar to that record. In other words, it is slightly faster and more straight-forward than usual, has more crunchy riffs and steers clear of growled vocals. The exception to this is "A Chapter In Loathing", a weird song with blastbeats and strangely screeched vocals, ironically the only enjoyable piece here. The other tracks follow the band's trademark template as described above and they do it... averagely at best. So if you love this band, the album will be a decent one, or perhaps a slightly above average one for you.

The music on For Lies I Sire has some moments but that doesn't take away from the fact that still, after all these years, the best My Dying Bride songs are those that throw their formula out of the window. Which is what I will happily do now with this CD. Hopefully it will hit an old lady right on the head.