My dying Bride - Towards The Sinister

were formed in June 1990 after lead guitarist Andrew Craighan left his former band Abiosis to join Aaron Stainthorpe (vocals), Calvin Robertshaw (guitar) and Rick Miah (drums). Adrian Jackson would join later on bass. After six months of rehearsing, the band recorded and released their demo, Towards The Sinister. Its title was taken from a line in the song "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium".

During the early 1990s My Dying Bride were part of what was known as the death/doom Great Three with Paradise Lost and Anathema - all three bands hailing from the north of England.

Their music is characterised by romantic, sensual lyrics and an obsessive attention to atmospheric detail. Early demos were death metal in a traditional sense, though much slower than most. However, their debut album As the Flower Withers saw the addition of violins and keyboards. Turn Loose the Swans built on that foundation, utilising clean as well as death grunts and, unusually, lead violin on several tracks. Trinity is a compilation of the three early EPs and a 7". The Angel and the Dark River saw the abandonment of death grunts altogether and added a more gothic feel to the songs. Like Gods of the Sun continued in that direction.

The highly experimental 34.788%... Complete was widely regarded as an extreme detour from the bands other works, and split fans down the middle. The vast majority of long-time fans that had listened to the band since Towards The Sinister have dismissed the album as not being made by the band at all, but by a group of lame impostors. Especially cited as a reason for this is the song 'Heroin Chic' - one fan has stated, to almost universal agreement, that the reason he so enjoyed the band was the lack of repetition in their material. For this reason, Heroin Chic, with its frequent repetitions of lyrics of the "nah nah nah yeah yeah yeah" variety, as fans like this describe it, has been written off as a spit in the face of fans. It is interesting to note that reactions to following albums are often sharply divided along the lines of reaction to 34.788%... Complete. Those accepting of it deride The Light at the End of the World as being a complacent exercise of treading water, while those who refuse to acknowledge 34.788%... Complete as canonical consider The Light at the End of the World to contain some of their best material since Turn Loose the Swans. My Dying Bride entered something of a hiatus after this, releasing two retrospective albums Meisterwerk 1 and Meisterwerk 2. These albums lay halfway between best of albums and rarity compilations and had no clear target audience. Completists of the band, while appreciating the early demos and rare tracks, bemoaned the many album tracks included, while those new to the band acquired a peculiar, career-spanning introduction which lacked coherence.

– Relinked -

Live at Dynamo festival 1995