TURN LOOSE THE SWANS

My Dying Bride's intriguing combination of gothic atmosphere, death-influenced doom metal, shared male and female vocals and haunting violin took a while to grow on me, especially since critical favourite Turn Loose the Swans tended to leave me cold. I've turned a corner on it, though, now that I've realised that this isn't so much a purist take on the death-doom sound (as they'd offered on As the Flower Withers) so much as it's a surprisingly successful blending of their style of death-doom and neoclassical darkwave music along the lines of Dead Can Dance. Now that I have noticed that collection, suddenly everything's come into sharp focus and I can see where they're going with this, and I appreciate it much more as a result.