Band:	My Dying Bride
Album:	As The Flower Withers
Style:	Death doom metal
Release date:	May 22, 1992
A review by:	KwonVerge

01. Silent Dance
02. Sear Me
03. The Forever People
04. The Bitterness And The Bereavement
05. Vast Choirs
06. The Return Of The Beautiful
07. Erotic Literature [1992 CD and cassette bonus]
08. The Forever People [live] [1996 Japanese bonus]
09. Unreleased Bitterness [2004 digipack bonus]

My Dying Bride is one of the most influential bands in the doom/death metal scene (and not only); may I say doom/death itself? Formed back in 1990 by Calvin, Aaron, Andy and Rick and having already released two demos ("Towards the sinister" and "God is alone") and an interesting EP ("Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium") they release during 1992 their long-awaited debut album "As the flower withers". Pure doom/death metal with death metal outbursts and Aaron being an utterly descriptive interpreter, inspiration, intense poetic lyrics with a sense of mourning romanticism and a dark wailing atmosphere consist of this wonderful debut album leaving behind a bitter taste of a dying bride, My Dying Bride?

The flower starts to wither with the mourning atmosphere of "Silent dance", dancing with inner intense emotions to reach "Sear me", a renowned My Dying Bride composition. If this isn't a mourning song then there will never exist one. The grandeur of melancholy, the sense of loss, the inner withering flower, all of them being expressed through the painful melodies of this composition. The bleeding guitar riffing turning slowly to angry desperate riffing and Aaron, a charismatic singer whose interpretation makes the whole atmosphere more intense, more descriptive by adding a sense of drama evoking dark romantic visions in the air, make "Sear me" a great composition.

"This is your last chance to get fucking moving" mentioned Aaron to the audience of the Dynamo 95' festival preparing them for a death metal dynamite, "The forever people", and he is totally right. The whole song is a death metal outburst itself filled with wonderful riffing and Aaron's ecstatic grunts. "The bitterness and the bereavement", which follows, opens with slow mourning guitar riffing, wailing violin melodies that tear apart all hope and Aaron screaming from the core of his soul and so the whole song continues in a mourning way with small outbursts with Aaron interpreting in dramatic ecstasy. The album continues in up-tempo rhythm and Aaron's sardonic laugh with "Vast Choirs" to slowly turn into another low-tempo doomy nightmare with faster moments of hate and Aaron expressing in emotional manner his poetically written mournful lyrics.

"The return of the beautiful" follows, a composition that has left me speechless. I cannot utter a word for such a wonderful piece of Art. A doom/death metal masterpiece with the mourning poetic lyrics harmonizing beautifully with the bleak soundscape filled with bleeding violin melodies, slow mourning guitars and death metal outbursts escalating in an intense way the song with Aaron either grunting or even screaming in emotional ecstasy and a rhythm section that creates walls of sound. The flower withers and lies dead on the bleeding earth with "Erotic Literature", the ending theme of this awesome debut album, an emotionally and musically intense, yet slowing down at times, composition with wonderful guitar work, atmosphere-evoking dark keyboard melodies and Aaron interpreting in an unequalled way the fabulous poetic lyrics.

"As the flower withers" is a must for all the doom/death metal and My Dying Bride adorers being a wonderful debut album of a wonderful band; the only "problem" of this album is its production which could have been better, yet the way it is done still adds another dark sense to the whole atmosphere of the album.