LIKE GODS OF THE SUN

Coming from two very strong albums like Turn Loose the Swans (1993) and The Angel and the Dark River (1995), the expectations for My Dying Bride's new album were high. Released in 1996, Like Gods of the Sun actually turned out to be a major disappointment for fans and it is to date regarded one of the low points of the British doomsters' discography. So what went wrong?

On the new album, My Dying Bride continued to hone in the formula they had already used on the previous two records, mixing the slow tempos and crushingly slow-winding guitar riffs of doom metal with gothic and romantic atmospheres. The gothic elements are perhaps a tad more prominent on Like Gods of the Sun, as Aaron Stainthorpe continued to perfect his dark croon to the point of sounding at times like a darker Fernando Ribeiro (Moonspell). The band also used slightly more conventional structures on the new album compared to the preceding records, with nearly a verse/chorus repetition on some tracks ("Grace Unhearing") and guitar riffs that are tighter and less sprawling. This isn't necessarily bad, although some fans may have seen this as a "commercial" move.

Thus, on paper Like Gods of the Sun ticks all the right boxes. Alas, the problem with the album is exactly that: it does truly sound like nothing more than a box-ticking exercise. Nearly all songs sound completely lifeless and uninspired, like if they had been written half-heartedly and without a true purpose. There are a few interesting ideas here and there (a cool guitar riff, a nice vocal melody), but they are stretched so thin across the 54 minutes of the record, that they fail to emerge from the general dullness. I also wonder how much effort the band actually put into this album. Take the transitions between the different song parts, for example. Often, the band just resorts to a "stop-and-go" technique: they just stop playing whatever riff they were playing, leave a second of silence, and start with a new, completely different riff. That's kinda lame. And gives an incredibly disjointed feel to a lot of the tracks on the album.

The album does have a couple of episodes that hark back to the glory of the previous records. "Grace Unhearing" features a nice chorus, probably one of the catchiest things that My Dying Bride had written up to that point in their career. The song is however too long and the repetition of verse/chorus is a bit of a joy-killer when this goes on for 7 minutes with little else in between. "A Kiss to Remember" uses one of the most inspired guitar riffs of the whole album, but again things are stretched too thin and too little happens to justify a duration of 7:31 minutes. After this track, the album drowns in a sequence of songs that are all incredibly flat and boring. Only album closer "For My Fallen Angel" tickles again my attention. This is an atypical track with processed strings, violin and spoken vocals. The fact that it is my favourite track of the whole album speaks volumes about the rest of the material of this record.

Overall, Like Gods of the Sun sounds a lot like a band in the middle of a creativity crisis. Alas, My Dying Bride's next couple of albums will confirm that this was indeed the case. In a bid to revive their songwriting formula, on their next record 34.788%... Complete, the band will seek inspiration in industrial metal, producing an album that is surely experimental but also not particularly impressive. It will take one more transitional album (The Light at the End of the World), before My Dying Bride will find again their footing, releasing what is instead one of the high points of their discography, The Dreadful Hours. If you are new to the band and want to sample their sound, my advice is to jump directly from The Angel and the Dark River to The Dreadful Hours, skipping the three rather mediocre records in between.