Album of the Week: My Dying Bride - Turn loose the swans

 

With the weather turning bleak this week, I chose something a lillte more desolate after listening to rather up-beat records the last two weeks.

This was a slow, long (with songs often between 6 to up to 11 minutes) and mournful doom metal record that's mostly at a meandering pace (apart from a few sparse faster sections). Slow, heavy riffing is interspersed with wailing (though not entirely accessible) guitar melodies on top of which clean vocals and growls interchange.

On the whole, I found the record to be often plodding, lacking focus and not truly memorable. Though the last three tracks of the record ("The Crown of Sympathy", "Turn loose the Swans" and "Black God") were (to my ears) better than the beginning of it, I can't really nominate a standout track as the songs sort of blended into one another.