lukretion Coming from two very strong albums like Turn Loose the Swans (1993) and The Angel and the Dark River (1995), the expectations for My Dying Bride’s new album were high. Released in 1996, Like Gods of the Sun actually turned out to be a major disappointment for fans and it is to date regarded one of the low points of the British doomsters’ discography. So what went wrong?

On the new album, My Dying Bride continued to hone in the formula they had already used on the previous two records, mixing the slow tempos and crushingly slow-winding guitar riffs of doom metal with gothic and romantic atmospheres. The gothic elements are perhaps a tad more prominent on Like Gods of the Sun, as Aaron Stainthorpe continued to perfect his dark croon to the point of sounding at times like a darker Fernando Ribeiro (Moonspell). The band also used slightly more conventional structures on the new album compared to the preceding records, with nearly a verse/chorus repetition on some tracks (“Grace Unhearing”) and guitar riffs that are tighter and less sprawling. This isn’t necessarily bad, although some fans may have seen this as a “commercial” move.

Thus, on paper Like Gods of the Sun ticks all the right boxes. Alas, the problem with the album is exactly that: it does truly sound like nothing more than a box-ticking exercise. Nearly all songs sound completely lifeless and uninspired, like if they had been written half-heartedly and without a true purpose. There are a few interesting ideas here and there (a cool guitar riff, a nice vocal melody), but they are stretched so thin across the 54 minutes of the record, that they fail to emerge from the general dullness. I also wonder how much effort the band actually put into this album. Take the transitions between the different song parts, for example. Often, the band just resorts to a “stop-and-go” technique: they just stop playing whatever riff they were playing, leave a second of silence, and start with a new, completely different riff. That’s kinda lame. And gives an incredibly disjointed feel to a lot of the tracks on the album.

The album does have a couple of episodes that hark back to the glory of the previous records. “Grace Unhearing” features a nice chorus, probably one of the catchiest things that My Dying Bride had written up to that point in their career. The song is however too long and the repetition of verse/chorus is a bit of a joy-killer when this goes on for 7 minutes with little else in between. “A Kiss to Remember” uses one of the most inspired guitar riffs of the whole album, but again things are stretched too thin and too little happens to justify a duration of 7:31 minutes. After this track, the album drowns in a sequence of songs that are all incredibly flat and boring. Only album closer “For My Fallen Angel” tickles again my attention. This is an atypical track with processed strings, violin and spoken vocals. The fact that it is my favourite track of the whole album speaks volumes about the rest of the material of this record.

Overall, Like Gods of the Sun sounds a lot like a band in the middle of a creativity crisis. Alas, My Dying Bride’s next couple of albums will confirm that this was indeed the case. In a bid to revive their songwriting formula, on their next record 34.788%... Complete, the band will seek inspiration in industrial metal, producing an album that is surely experimental but also not particularly impressive. It will take one more transitional album (The Light at the End of the World), before My Dying Bride will find again their footing, releasing what is instead one of the high points of their discography, The Dreadful Hours. If you are new to the band and want to sample their sound, my advice is to jump directly from The Angel and the Dark River to The Dreadful Hours, skipping the three rather mediocre records in between.

UMUR "Like Gods of the Sun" is the 4th full-length studio album by UK doom/death metal act My Dying Bride. The album was released through Peaceville Records in October 1996. It´s the successor to "The Angel and the Dark River" from 1995 and features the same sextet lineup who recorded the predecessor. It would however be the last album to feauture drummer Rick Miah and keyboard player/violinist Martin Powell.

The material on "Like Gods of the Sun" continue the dark and gothic tinged doom metal sound of "The Angel and the Dark River (1995)", and as the case also was on the predecessor "Like Gods of the Sun" solely features clean vocals. At this point it seemed the growling vocals had been completely abandoned and a choice had been made to continue only singing clean vocals (in retrospect we now know that would change later in their career, but back then this was the reality). "Like Gods of the Sun" feels like the natural successor to "The Angel and the Dark River (1995)" and the two albums share an overall similar sound. Dark, gothic, and heavy doom metal with clean vocals, melancholic violin themes and atmosphere enchancing keyboards/piano.

While "The Angel and the Dark River (1995)" and "Like Gods of the Sun" share a similar sound, there are also great differences between the two. The former is often quite an adventurous album with experimental ideas and unconventional song structures, while the latter is in many ways a much more formulaic and predictable release. "Like Gods of the Sun" features well defined vers/chorus structures and it´s the time in My Dying Bride´s career they came closest to sounding mainstream. Mainstream in this context should of course be understood as underground mainstream, as it´s doubtful you´ll ever hear My Dying Bride on the radio.

My Dying Bride still incorporate sections and ideas you wouldn´t hear on a normal 3 minutes long vers/chorus structured track, so in that respect "Like Gods of the Sun" isn´t easy listening material. The tracks are relatively catchy upon initial listen, although it´s not an album featuring many standout tracks. The two tracks bookending the album (the title track and "For My Fallen Angel") stand out the most. The title track because it´s the most memorable and most well composed track on the album (an album where many tracks feature rather awkward abrupt changes between sections), and "For My Fallen Angel" because it´s a track featuring only keyboards/synths, violin, and a spoken word passage by lead vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe. Stainthorpe continues his dramatic almost crying gothic tinged clean vocal style of the predecessor, but he takes it even further on this album.

"Like Gods of the Sun" features a dark and heavy sounding production, which is professional and well sounding, but actually doesn´t suit My Dying Bride´s music that well. It´s too massive and details are lost, and don´t get me started on the clicky drum sound...

...so upon conclusion "Like Gods of the Sun" is an album with both good qualities and some that aren´t that great, and to my ears it´s probably the least interesting album in the band´s discography. They sound too comfortable and not willing to experiment and push boundaries like they did on all three preceding releases (and would do again on the next album). This is the sound of stagnation. It´s overall still a quality release though, and a 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

siLLy puPPy MY DYING BRIDE had been riding high since their critically acclaimed debut “As The Flower Withers” with their unique mix of early Celtic Frost darkness and Candlemass doom metal heft however most of all what really allowed them stand out from the pack was the additional gothic touches that included a haunting violin. They would soon hit musical perfection on the following second and third albums “Turn Loose The Swans” and “The Angel And The Dark River” which transformed them into one of the most interesting metal bands of the 90s. While the band hit the ground running with a completely unique style, experimentation was also a factor and on each album as they would shift the dynamics slightly and change around the dominating roles of the instruments without sacrificing the plaintive doom metal dirge feel that they made theirs alone.

On the third full-length release LIKE GODS OF THE SUN, a new formula was implemented to create an entirely new way of mixing their classic elements together. While “Turn Loose The Swans” had moments that dropped the guitar, bass and drum metal aspects and instead focused on the lugubrious violin wails and synthesized atmospheric bleakness, “The Angel And The Dark River” on the other hand added more metal oomf to the process and avoided such downtime. On LIKE GODS OF THE SUN however, the metal elements got turned up a few notches which is immediately noticeable on the opening title track that let’s loose the heavy distorted guitar riffs without a violin to be heard, however while subjected more to the background still remains a vital part of the band’s overall sound as the atmospheric backdrop makes landfall.

The 90s was a strange time when everything alternative was en vogue and it has always fascinated me how the immense popularity of a particular style flexes its gravitational pull and makes established bands do very strange things and it seems MY DYING BRIDE was not immune for despite having produced some lauded albums, still found themselves adopting some of the alternative metal playbook elements on LIKE GODS OF THE SUN. First of all, the tracks are much shorter. There are no sprawling epics that delve into long meandering violin fueled cloud drifts as in the past. The song structures are concise and to the point with the chugging riffs while retaining a doom metal vibe implement alternative metal and even thrash metal delivery. Ever so graceful in how the changing things up can make or break an album, MY DYING BRIDE nevertheless pulls it off quite successfully with the heavier guitar heft being smoothed out by the admittedly less frequent but fully functional combo effect of the violin and synthesized ambience.

For all its emphasis on a greater metal bombast which very well could’ve resulted from the band’s tour with Iron Maiden, MY DYING BRIDE ends the album letting the listener know that they are essentially the same band with the only track “For My Fallen Angel” that eschews the metal elements altogether and focuses on an ambient synthesized swirl that supports a mournful violin solo performance with Aaron Stainthorpe’s vocals parked on poetic narration instead of the usual gothically tinged romanticism that graced the rest of the album. While the band focused on more metal heft on this album, they did not however return to the death metal growls nor implement the aggressive riffs of the past. LIKE GODS OF THE SUN nicely weaves together the band’s classic sound with an alternative metal presentation that happen to find a few thrash influences in the mix. Overall, this is another stellar album however a clear sign that the sheer perfection of the past masterpieces had expired. While clearly a step down in epic quality, a step down from perfection is nevertheless still a great album.

Warthur Having excised the death metal DNA from their sound on The Angel and the Dark River, My Dying Bride would go on to continue that album's gothic-tinged doom metal sound on this release. This time around, however, things seem to have evolved a little, with a wider emotional palette present; in particular, the music no longer seems to be entirely succumbing to melancholy, with the compositions starting to show a bit of defiant grit to them that was absent before. For those who specifically look to My Dying Bride for the purpose of hearing the most miserable metal music on the planet, this may be disappointing, but for my part it is a welcome shift in their sound which stops this from simply being a bland remake of The Angel and the Dark River.