There is no doubt that Feel The Misery by My Dying Bride; the doom metal pioneers, was one of the most waited albums in 2015. My Dying Bride‘s music is always the way and the shelter for most of doom metal lovers. Feel The Misery is the first full-length album after the return of Calvin Robertshaw, their guitarist, after his departure in 1999.
The album opens with ‘And My Father Left Forever’, the track carries dynamic, heavy, powerful tunes. The melodies moved from high speed, slowly from 1:39 to 2:31 and again from 4:08 to 5:03 and from 6:11 till 7:09. The track carries some symphonic sorrowful parts and some funeral doom touches. The vocals were all clean with exquisite performance. In fact the track made us a little bit confused because we expected that the album will be introduced with more gloomy music.
The following track is ‘To Shiver in Empty Halls’; an epic track. It opened with growling death vocals and melodic riffs. It’s like a story or a play, with every movement telling a part from the play, from the start till 1:52 you can say it’s like an exposition of the play, then from 1:55 till 4:27 acted like the first scene, but with more appearance of the lead guitar and symphonic parts alongside a few atmospheric touches. This part expresses what we call the rising action. The second scene ended with clean vocals from 3:48 till 4:11. 4:28 was an intro for the climax of the track with an interlude by the keys and low tunes of guitars from 4:28 till 4:59. We are still in the rising action, where the riffs are back to their power from 5:00 till 5:32 then we met a part from clear bass lines, guitars and keys in 5:32 till 6:04. In 7:27 we met the climax, which kinda turns the song –if we may say that – into funeral doom with high death growling and clear keys sounds. In 8:30 we reach the falling action when the music fades out and all that was left were sounds of guitars and it finally ends with whispering vocals:
“For those of you, who exist,
I lay for you, three numbers six
Over the hill and under the ground,
Sing as you like, there is no sound.”
Through this particular track we felt that every instrument has its own part to shine as characters of the play who sang with their speeches. We should mention that through the first 2 parts of the track, there were some breaks in the drums.
‘A Cold New Curse’ was more of a funeral doom style with some symphonic parts. ‘Feel The Misery’ was like the dark rooms of the soul; the track carries emotional symphonies from 1:35 to 2:38 in addition to magical keys in 3:26. Moving on to ‘A Throne of Wisdom’ ‘ I Celebrate your Skin’ and the last track ‘Within a Sleeping Forest’ they all had the same funeral doom style with variety of brutal and clean vocals.
Track number 7 ‘I Almost Loved you’, stopped us since it was one of the most beautiful tracks in the album. The keys moved us to another separated world; world that is more sorrowful, it brought all our broken memories and our smashed feelings with its gloomy injured vocals.
“I wandered half the night to cast a secret ring in fire.
We’d been lovers only a short time”
Yeah, was a great experience, but this release is not what we expected from doom metal legends My Dying Bride, even if it was at the same level of their previous album. However, it’s still as unique, more into funeral doom taste with symphonic mournful taste.
Written by: Mahmoud Ezzat and Rana Atef.
Edited by: NJ Bakr
