A MAP OF ALL OUR FAILURES

"A Map of All our Failures" is the 12th full-length studio album by UK doom metal act My Dying Bride. The album was released through Peaceville Records in October 2012. Since the release of their last "regular" doom metal full-length studio album "For Lies I Sire (2009)", the band have busied themselved with the experimental "Evinta (2011)" album and the 27 minute one track "The Barghest O' Whitby (2011)" EP, so it´s safe to say that My Dying Bride have been as busy as ever.

With "A Map of All our Failures" they prove that they are as consistent as ever too. The music on the album is not surprisingly melancholic doom metal featuring crushingly heavy riffs, hauntingly beautiful leads/harmony work, the occasional violin part, atmospheric keyboards and a gloomy gothic atmosphere boosted by the paatos filled clean vocals/lyrics by lead vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe, who also occasionally growl. As such there are nothing out of the ordinary on "A Map of All our Failures", but only after a few listens it becomes apparent that My Dying Bride have done it again. Produced another high quality doom/death metal release that sets the standard for others to follow.

Standout tracks to my ears are "Kneel Till Doomsday", "Like a Perpetual Funeral" and "Abandoned as Christ", but the quality is consistent throughout. The sound production is a little bit less exciting than on the last couple of albums and overall I´d place "A Map of All our Failures" along side "Like Gods of the Sun (1996)" and "The Dreadful Hours (2001)", which in my world are some of the least interesting albums by My Dying Bride. As mentioned above that certainly doesn´t mean that "A Map of All our Failures" is a bad album by any means. In fact it´s a great album, but compared to their best material it´s slightly sub par. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is still very much deserved though.

Bit of a ballsy move to invite critical low blows with such an album title, isn't it? This is especially the case when, for the first time, it feels like My Dying Bride haven't moved forward on a release. As much as I (and others) personally didn't care for 34.788%... Complete, and as mixed a reception as Evinta received, at least both those releases constitute My Dying Bride trying something different, and there's always been a sense on their releases that they've been updating their sound one way or another between them.

Here, though, they seem to have stalled in the style of one of the more generic doom metal moments on For Lies I Sire, and don't really seem to have much of a map out. Luckily, it's still pretty good doom metal and worth a spin if you're a fan, but we've come to expect better from them over the years.