Category Archives: Music I Love

Once-monthly shares of music that changed my life.

Music I Love: “Like Gods of the Sun”, My Dying Bride (1996)

There are four bands I could not live without, and the doom and despair of My Dying Bride is at the top of that list. For decades, they have been darkening the musical world with their unique brand of metal, and each of their albums has wrenched my heart and filled it with darkness.

They began their career in the early nineties, releasing the groundbreaking As the Flower Withers in 1992. Though the influence of eighties death metal is still apparent here, striking songs such as Sear Me and The Return of the Beautiful stand out as a preview for what was to come: slow, haunting and utterly crushing with the weight of darkness.

The follow-up, 1993’s Turn Loose the Swans, set the stage for the rest of their career. Gone were the fast death metal riffs, and for the first time we heard Aaron Stainthorpe’s wonderful, gloomy and heartbreaking voice, coupled with the dark growls of their death metal roots. What we were left with was the epitome of doom metal.

The Angel and the Dark River, in 1995, continued the melodic, atmospheric trend, and dispensed with growled vocals entirely. The violin, which had been a mainstay of their lineup since the very beginning, became ever more prominent, and the band were clearly leaping from strength to strength.

And then, in 1996, they released Like Gods of the Sun. To this day, this remains a masterpiece of doom metal, and it was here, on their fourth album, that we could see all the pieces finally come together. Crushing yet memorable, songs such as the title track, Grace Unhearing, and For You envelop the listener in a black, dark world of sound. Words of darkness and despair sweep around you, speaking of evil, pain and sadness:

Falling, drowning, deeper and forever

Choking, sinking, deeper into this ocean

Screaming, crying, for someone to save me

Reaching, hoping, calling to no one

Grace Unhearing – My Dying Bride, 1996

As we finally approach the ending of the album, the exceptionally dark It Will Come gives way seamlessly to the brilliant Here in the Throat. With its sudden change of rhythm halfway through, it pounds relentlessly onwards, drawing you inexorably towards the final, inevitable conclusion.

Except it doesn’t end there. After an album of doom, darkness and heaviness, something entirely other suddenly soothes its way through the speakers. Entering with haunting beauty – only synth and violin – the weeping, tragic For My Fallen Angel brings the album to the only close it could have possibly had. A three-stanza spoken poem, it swirls around you, and as the final notes linger, and then finally fade to silence, you feel as though there is nothing left in all the world, and you are left in eternal, silent darkness; a soothing, warm oblivion that will take you away forever.

This album was such a mirror for my own state of mind at the time that it has become inextricably linked to the darkest of thoughts for me. It played endlessly through sleepless, gothic, depressed nights, when candles burned down around me and the scent of blood rose in the air.

Music I Love: “Disintegration”, The Cure (1989)

So here’s a band I’m late to, having only got around to liking them in the last year. I know what you’re thinking (where the hell were you for the last thirty years?), but in my defense, I was raised on a diet of Schubert and Chopin, and in my rebellious teens began to blow my ears off with Metallica and Slayer.

The upshot is that, even though I knew I really ought to be into The Cure, I just somehow never got around to it. Life was saved by a happy coincidence involving Pandora and an unlimited iPhone data plan; it all started with The Sisters of Mercy in the car on the way to work, which turned into Depeche Mode in the car to work, which turned into Siouxsie and the Banshees, and naturally, The Cure. (Blondie and The Smiths somehow found their way in there too; did you ever notice that big hit Muse had a while ago, Uprising, has an awful lot in common with Call Me?)

Now see, I should have bloody known I loved Robert Smith and his miserable band of Brits back when I first watched The Crow, given that their song, Burn, features rather prominently (along with Ministry, which gives away the awesomeness of this movie).

But it wasn’t until very recently that I bought my very first ever The Cure album! I’m a little disappointment to say I bought it on a CD; long gone are the beloved days of actual records.

I pretty much knew it was going to have to be Disintegration. My wife personally loves Boys Don’t Cry, from their debut album, but being a good little goth, it’s just a little too upbeat for me. Disintegration is a lush, brooding and miserable head trip, from the opening acid-fuelled Plainsong, through to absolutely gorgeously despondent tracks such as Pictures of You, Prayers for Rain, and the title track.

Robert, being the good little goth he was, was in a thoroughly miserable and depressed state by 1989, upset by the fact that The Cure were popular, and consequently began using LSD to self-medicate (now, of course, we’re all stuck with valium). The result was one of their darkest records to date, and many of the lyrics reflect this. From lost love (a favorite meme of The Cure) to the anxiety of drugs, each and every track paints pictures in black:

“I think it’s dark and it looks like rain,” you said

“And the wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world,” you said

“And it’s so cold, it’s like the cold if you were dead,”

Then you smiled for a second

Plainsong – The Cure, 1989

Remembering you, how you used to be

Slow drowned, you were angels, so much more than everything

Hold for the last time, then slip away quietly

Open my eyes, but I never see anything

Pictures of You – The Cure, 1989

And I feel like I’m being eaten

By a thousand million shivering furry holes

And I know that in the morning I will wake up in the shivering cold

And the spiderman is always hungry

“Come into my parlour,” said the spider to the fly

“I have something.”

Lullaby – The Cure, 1989

This album has been on repeat for some time now, and it gets better every time. It takes me back to a time when the room was dark, and the candles were lit, and there was smoke in the air and the soothing sound of music, soft and dark, permeated the stillness. Of lying on the ground, of the scent of blood, and the trip as the floor begins to tilt beneath you.

Music I Love: “Crimson”, Sentenced (2000)

Sentenced are a genre-defining band in many ways; hailing from Finland, their career has been marked by music of an intense, dark and depressing nature. Beginning as a melodic death metal band, their seminal album Down (1996) saw a departure from the guttural vocals, leaning towards a more melodic style, both vocally and musically. This was followed by Frozen in 1998, which furthered the new melodic style of the band. However, it was two years later, in January 2000, that Senteced pulled it all together, and released (to my mind) the most perfect album of their career: Crimson.

Sentenced’s themes universally revolve around depression, loss and death, though there are – every so often – rays of bitter hope that shine through. One of my favorite songs, Brief Is the Light, from their 2002 album The Cold White Light, contains the words:

Hear these words I say;

Make the most out of your day

For brief is the light on our way

On this momentary trail

Hear these words, awake:

Make the most out of your day

For brief is the time that we’re allowed to stay

However, there is little of this hope on Crimson, an album dominated by self-loathing, guilt and despair. At the time of its release, I was in a very dark place in my life, and every word on this album spoke to me, intimately. From the opening track, Bleed in my Arms, we hear of the destruction of love, for nothing but the knowledge that it is the only thing to do, the only just self-punishment. The second track, Home in Despair, is perhaps one of the most immediately identifiable songs to anyone who has suffered depression:

Again the sky has fallen down on me

Once more a world has crumbled down and over me

 [break]

And yet in some twisted way

I enjoy my misery

And in some strange way

I have grown together with my agony

 [break]

I feel home in despair for I dwell in grief

And I feel home when the air’s too thick to breathe

And I feel home anywhere human lives are going down the drain

 [break]

For as long as I remember life has been hard

I guess they have “misery” written somewhere in my stars

[break] 

For I have mourned for so damn long…

That I’ve forgotten what it was for

Everything has gone so wrong

That I really couldn’t think of anything more

[break]

I feel home in despair for I dwell in grief

And I feel home when the air’s too thick to breathe

And I feel home anywhere the light of the day is drowned in heavy rain

 [break]

Yet I know the worst is still to come

A further departure from their traditional style, the album opens to a slow-paced tempo, and in fact doesn’t pick up at all until Broken, five tracks in. The mood of the entire album, from start to finish, is morose, doomed, and dark. Halfway through, we have the anthemic Killing Me, Killing You, perhaps the best known song from the album. In some ways, this song of a torturous relationship is, if anything, the high point of the album, followed by an unstoppable descent into the black, all the way until the final, dying My Slowing Heart.

This is an incredibly strong album of frailty and despair, and its words speak a powerful message of depression. One of the most memorable, and heart-wrenching lines comes from Fragile, three songs in:

Sometimes it feels it would be easier to fall

Than to flutter in the air with these wings so weak and torn

Sentenced disbanded deliberately in 2005; a sort of pre-announced musical suicide. There could be no better end for a band so lost in despair.