10

Not Dead Yet

Long, aching songs touching on tragedy and loss teaming deep chordal riffs and weeping violin? It must be our very own doom legends My Dying Bride. The bride in question has been in the throes of death for over twenty years now but shows little sign of giving in. The Manuscript is the Bradford group's thirteenth (!) studio release and is a four track EP of enviable quality at such a stage in their long career.

Title track, The Manuscript, blends violin with acoustic touches for a broken tale of: "A ruined soul and empty man. A lost shadow so old and damned. An awful martyrdom, so holy and feeble." Brutality comes with the wizened growl of founder Aaron Stainthorpe on Var Gud Over Er developing into creaking melancholy, "Every hour, I am broken down. I will not kneel before you broken." The song all the while cloaked in alternatively pummelling and evil metallic riffs from Andrew Craighan.

A Pale Shroud of Longing probably needs no description given that title but needless to say the music is in simpatico as it incorporates that harrowing violin of Shaun MacGowan and the spoken interlude: "Her heart, careful and broken. She places its pieces below. And with the length of her whole body. Our shadows so very old." Only Tears To Replace Her With is the preceding track's companion piece trawling for true feelings: "I hate everything around me but I want to carry you back to heaven."

In just four tracks The Manuscript, recorded at the same session as last year's full-length A Map of All Our Failures, presents a neat summary of the rain swept sounds of modern My Dying Bride - a band still evolving and refining their doomed romanticism.