MY DYING BRIDE — A Line of Deathless Kings (review)

MY DYING BRIDE — A Line of Deathless Kings album cover

Album · 2006 · Doom Metal

4/5 · 2011-08-19
UMUR

"A Line of Deathless Kings" is the 9th full-length studio album by UK doom metal act My Dying Bride. The album was released in October 2006 by Peaceville Records.

The music on the album is the sound of My Dying Bride as we know them. Crushingly heavy riff, melodic leads and themes, catchy heavy rythms and of course the melancholic and paatos filled vocals by Aaron Stainthorpe. Shortly before entering the studio to record the album drummer Shaun Taylor-Steels announced his departure from My Dying Bride. He had persistent problems with his ankle that forced him to quit the band. Session drummer John Bennett (The Prophecy) replaced him and does a great job. He even manages to put his own touch to the recordings. I really enjoy both his playing and the sound production of his drums on "A Line of Deathless Kings". While long time member and bassist Adrian "Ade" Jackson plays the bass on the album, this would be his last recording with the band. He left in January 2007 and moved to America.

The tracks are as always well written, performed with passion and add to that a professional and well sounding sound production and you got a quality product. I wouldn´t say My Dying Bride have developed their sound radically, but as with all their albums they´ve tweaked their ideas to make the sound on this album unique compared to the rest of their output. It´s a delicate art but once again they´ve succeeded. The thing that´s most obvious upon first listen is that "A Line of Deathless Kings" features very few growling vocals. In fact it´s only the track "Deeper Down" where the growling vocals are present and in a very short section in "Love's Intolerable Pain". It´s a quite interesting choice as the band had actually begun to incorporate growls more and more into their music over the course of the last couple of albums (the last 3 to be exact) after that vocal style had been gone from their music for a couple of albums before that. But a bit surprisingly to me, the growling vocals aren´t missed (and I usually enjoy the contrast between the growling and the clean vocals) and that is in large part due to the memorability of the melody lines. This was probably the most memorable and accessible vocal lines and melodies written by the band up until then. The passion behind the vocal performance on this album is also exquisite. Aaron Stainthorpe pours his soul into the songs and it works wonders.

My Dying Bride are amazingly consistent. Even this far into their career there are only very few of their albums where the quality has dropped slightly (and I mean slightly). Other than those brief moments, their output has been of consistently high quality. "A Line of Deathless Kings" is no different in that respect and among their strongest releases yet. The tracks are well written and intriguing, the production is powerful and the musicianship is excellent. My Dying Bride are arguably one of the few leaders of their genre and "A Line of Deathless Kings" is just another demonstration of power that will leave the followers kneeling in the dust, just hoping that they can be like My Dying Bride when they grow up. A 4 - 4.5 star rating is fully deserved.