THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE WORLD

After a long period of sonic exploration beginning with the blending of death-doom and darkwave on Turn Loose the Swans, passing through the gothic-doom metal phase of The Angel and the Dark River and Like Gods of the Sun, and culminating in the experimental miscellanea of 34.788%...Complete, My Dying Bride's next move was to go straight back to death-doom on The Light At the End of the World, with both growled vocals and moments of faster playing bringing the death metal back into their formula.

And yet at the same time, this isn't As the Flower Withers Part 2. My Dying Bride have clearly learned the lessons of their sonic evolution, and the result of this is a death-doom release which the incarnation of the band who produced their early material could have never realised. It took that period of exploration to hone their craft and pick up the ideas which come together to make The Light At the End of the World such a well-crafted piece, and in fact I actually think it beats out everything that came before it. The patience of both My Dying Bride and their fanbase is amply rewarded here, and the pessimists are proved wrong: it turns out the light at the end of the world wasn't an oncoming train after all.