Band:	My Dying Bride
Album:	The Light At The End Of The World
Style:	Death doom metal, Gothic doom metal
Release date:	October 12, 1999
A review by:	KwonVerge

01. She Is The Dark
02. Edenbeast
03. The Night He Died
04. The Light At The End Of The World
05. The Fever Sea
06. Into The Lake Of Ghosts
07. The Isis Script
08. Christliar
09. Sear Me III

After the different and experimental "34.788% Complete", a really good yet so shamefully underrated album, My Dying Bride managed to return during 1999 and along with them came nightfall and the mourning and only a slight remembrance of "the light at the end of the world" was vivid in the far horizon.

Some line-up changes and Calvin Robertshaw, guitarist of My Dying Bride since their very beginning, and Bill Law, drummer of the band only for "34.788% Complete", are no longer part of the doomed family of My Dying Bride. This time all the guitars have been performed by Andrew Craighan and Shaun Steels fills the empty seat of the drummer, holding this position with his worth up to nowadays.

And since they were accused by a big part of their fan base for the "betrayal" of "34.788% Complete" they managed to offer what they know doing in a flawless way, heart-rending and mourning doom/death metal the My Dying Bride way. The guitar passages are just fabulous. The guitar work whether it relies on powerful riffing, that escalates the emotional charge of the songs through intense outbursts, or has a more wailing and tear-filled approach is utterly inspired, stunning and unerring. The rhythm section lends groove to the songs and plays its role well, sounding imposing and dynamic when it has to or more gentle when the moment comes. The keyboard melodies float in the air like a funereal chant, like tunes of farewell, adorning the soundscape with their serene and wailing melodies or with their more intense and darker sound. One way or another they harmonize so beautifully together with Aaron Stainthorpe's poetic interpretation that gives life to his utterly esoteric and beauteous lyrics in such a unique way, like always. Whether he howls, grunts, recites or sings in a heart-rending or intense way he sounds so real, so emotional, living every single word he utters. He's the voice of doom after all, so you can't expect something less than perfect?

Well, as for the highlights of the album they are neither one nor two but, as you guessed correctly, they are many simply because we're talking about a My Dying Bride release and this means high quality and deep emotions. Songs that will make you drown in a world of depression are definitely the haunting, with the orgasmic outbursts, "She Is The Dark", the monumental, with its more upbeat but bleak and depressive moments as well, "Edenbeast" with the beautiful oriental guitar passage in the beginning, the fragile "Sear Me III", the feverish? "Fever Sea", "Christliar" with its devout and unearthly beautiful aesthetic, "Into The Lake Of Ghosts" with its strange oblivious feeling and one of the most elegiac songs ever composed, "The Light At The End Of The World". Tih piece of Art is one of those songs that work either as a cure or a curse at the same time because you may feel its tenderness and the sense of hope it bears, yet you may drown, simply because all hope dies in the end, but love remains? the deepest feeling along with memories of her?

This is an album every doom/death metal fan should own, an ode to tragedy, forlorn wishes and deep longing in the heart. Don't miss it, just this?

"In deepest love and lust and passion, entwined they did fall..."