THE DREADFUL HOURS

At a time when the other bands forming the so-called "Peaceville Three" of death-doom - Paradise Lost and Anathema - had plotted a course taking them firmly away from those roots, My Dying Bride had returned to their death-doom origins in The Light At the End of the World, an album greatly enriched by their musical wanderings through other genres.

On The Dreadful Hours, they magnificently build and improve on that foundation by producing their most terrifying album yet. There's still a heavy dose of doom metal melancholy in the mix, but the death metal side of their sound is more vicious than ever, and here and there - a shriek in the vocals, a blast of the drums - there's a mild sprinkling of black metal influences that enriches their sound and adds another dimension to it.

Some bands hit their peak early on, and then must spend the rest of their careers either resisting entropy or (as is sadly more common) declining into irrelevance as they run out of ideas. My Dying Bride, conversely, seem to have only gotten better and better over the first decade or so of their existence (with a few missteps being eminently forgivable as being a necessary part of their journey of experimentation), and here they have produced a true masterpiece.