After an excellent album at the beginning of the year, My Dying Bride retrieves with an EP.
Founded in 1990, the band still has two of its creators, Andrew Craighan (guitar) and Aaron Sainthorpe (vocals). To this duo, we add Lena Abé (bass), Shaun Macgowan (keyboards/violin), Jeff Singer (guitar, ex-Paradise Lost) and Neil Blanchett (guitar, Valafar). And here is Macabre Cabaret.
The first song, Macabre Cabaret, lasts ten minutes. During this time slot, the band offers us a true journey. Between leads and this heady clean vocals, the vocalist’s howlings will extract us from this slumber orchestrated by the keyboard. The Gothic rhythmic inspires melancholy at every moment, then the ride finally lets us breath before slowly resuming. The weight of this instrumental part loaded of sorrow crushes us until the end, while offering some dark tones.
A Secret Kiss, the song revealed to unveil the EP, is also made of this languor and heaviness. In no time, the sound is already in your mind, darkening it more and more. The shrilling harmonics add this Old School touch, to accompany mystical vocals. A feeling of oppression slowly arises to explode before A Pulse of Golf and Stars, a song of which keyboard is beautiful but also very sad. Then it is a majestuous sound that comes in the air, without saturation. A touch of blackness, but still no saturated sound, then keys is back to work. Until the last second.
Bands that offer two releases during the same year are rare, and My Dying Bride is one of them. Macabre Cabaret is a very Old School EP that only announces good things for a band that enchant us at every note.
90/100