UMUR "As the Flower Withers" is the debut full-length studio album by UK doom/death metal act My Dying Bride. The album was released through Peaceville Records in May 1992. Peaceville Records signed the band after listening to the 1991 "God Is Alone" EP. My Dying Bride´s first release on Peaceville Records was the "Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium" EP from 1991, which with its accompanying promotional video airing on MTVs Headbangers Ball, put My Dying Bride firmly on the doom/death metal map. Following up on a success (underground or not) is always a daunting task, but "As the Flower Withers" proved to be an even greater success for the band, and put them in the forefront of the UK doom/death metal scene along with artists like Paradise Lost and Anathema (who at this point through hadn´t released their debut yet).

The music on the album is a combination of crushingly heavy and slow doom/death metal and mid-paced and occasionally faster paced old school death metal. On this album lead vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe only uses his growling vocal style. Although the tracks feature elements and sections with both of the above mentioned musical styles, the album´s tracks can roughly be divided into two main styles. "Silent Dance" is a short classical intro, so I´ll only mention it briefly as a great atmospheric opening to the album. "Sear Me", "The Bitterness and the Bereavement", and "The Return of the Beautiful" are all fairly long, slow, and heavy doom/death metal tracks, featuring majestic melancholic atmospheres, classical contrapoint melodies between guitars and violin, and poetic lyrics, while "The Forever People", "Vast Choirs", and "Erotic Literature" are mainly old school death metal tracks with the occassional more doomy touch.

The musicianship is strong on all posts, but I´ll give a special mention to drummer Rick Miah for his creative approach to doom metal drumming. It´s not always easy for a drummer to make that part of a doom metal album interesting, but Miah understands the importance of variation, and to play some catchy and memorable rhythm patterns. Take for example the opening drum pattern to "Sear Me". Now that´s one hell of a catchy rhythm pattern that´ll stick in your head forever.

"As the Flower Withers" features a powerful, raw, and detailed sound production, which suits the material well. The guitar tone could maybe have been a bit more defined, but it´s a minor detail, and overall the album is well sounding. So upon conclusion it´s a quality album and a seminal doom/death metal release from the early 90s. To my ears it´s not a perfect release though, and it´s mostly a result of the uneven songwriting and stylistic inconsistency. My Dying Bride shine when they play slow doom/death metal, but when they play more "straight" old school death metal they are pretty unremarkable (or at least nothing out of the ordinary), and as half of the tracks on the album are in that style, I´d say a 3.5 star (70%) rating is fair.

siLLy puPPy After the attention getting debut of their first EP “Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium,” MY DYING BRIDE released their first full-length debut AS THE FLOWER WITHERS the following year in the vein of that EP’s title track. This album is by and far the heaviest and most brutal of any in the MY DYING BRIDE discography with heavy emphasis on the blistering guitar riffing and pummeling bass and percussive attacks. The trademark lugubrious violins of at-the-time session musician Martin Powell are a vital part to the band’s sound at this stage but all hasn’t integrated together seamlessly quite yet. At this stage the classically oriented sounds as heard in the symphonic intro “Silent Dance” as well as segments within the larger tracks such as “The Bitterness And Bereavement” and “The Return Of The Beautiful” are more than present but it is quite apparent early on in “Silent Dance” that MY DYING BRIDE was very much an early pioneer of the death-doom metal sound along with contemporaries Anathema and Paradise Lost. AS THE FLOWER WITHERS is also the only full-length release where lead vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe exclusively utilizes his death growls which contribute to the overall soundscape giving a more dirty and raw metal feel as opposed to the slicker, more romantic Gothic utterings of his later clean vocal style.

While the longer tracks tend to portend the future of where the band was heading, some tracks like “The Forever People” are exclusively rooted in the death metal past with unapologetic heaviness and aggressive bombastic ear assaults sans any trace of symphonic effects of wailing violin. On the more progressive tracks like “The Bitterness And The Bereavement” the band utilizes all of their magic in one behemoth of a composition with sensual tear inducing violin wails meeting Sabbath inspired doom guitar chords stomping so hard that it registers on the Richter scale while the suffocating atmospheres deplete all the remaining oxygen from the room. As if the sophistication of their dread-inducing instrumental talent wasn’t sufficient enough, MY DYING BRIDE has always delivered the most thought provoking lyrics based in painful romances, utter despair and complete collapse of faith and all of that was already present from the beginning having been fully developed at this stage as perfectly heard on some of the most sophisticated tracks such as the outstanding masterpiece “The Return Of The Beautiful” where all of their early and later sounds play together in perfect harmony.

AS THE FLOWER WITHERS is one of the most woefully underrated albums of MY DYING BRIDE’s entire discography. While they pretty much steered their distinct sound exclusively into the atmospheric doom metal arenas starting with “Turn Loose The Swans,” there is something mysterious and profound about this one. Not only does it retain the primeval ooze effect of nascent metal’s birth pangs but has an intense energetic delivery absent from subsequent releases. The exclusive use of death growls may dissuade the fans of the romantic clean approach but i find this early sound of MY DYING BRIDE to be equally as compelling to experience upon returning visits. The progressive touches and the sophistication of the compositions puts this on a whole other level of the day and the dual guitar assaults of Andrew Craighan and Calvin Robertshaw are allowed to shine like on no other album that came after and even delved into Morbid Angel territory with blistering riffs and squealing solos on “Vast Choirs.” While i’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite album from MY DYING BRIDE being that their canon is so incredibly consistent, i ,in no way, can rank AS THE FLOWER WITHERS as an inferior product. On the contrary i find this to be a stimulating attack of the senses that offers a higher octane value than anything that would soon follow.

Warthur Although subsequent albums like Turn Loose the Swans seem to be regarded as the peak of early My Dying Bride, it's actually this debut album of theirs which has won me around to their brand of death-doom. I suspect the reason it's often overlooked is that it has a somewhat simpler, stripped-down sound: there's still some violin, but it's not especially promiment, and the vocals only come from Aaron Stainthorpe and they are mostly in a death growl. But with their sound pared back like this, you can really appreciate the group's ability to switch between slow, doomy gloom and faster death metal-oriented playing at the drop of a hat. It isn't without its issues - in particular, I think Rick Miah's drum sound is occasionally a bit thin - but it's a solid start for the band and enough to prompt me to take a second look at them.