![]() I find very few flaws in this album, and they are mostly things that are not really bad but that maybe could have been done better. The high-level production keeps the quality of the album high and helps in highlighting the different tone variations, the riffs, the basslines and the overall structure. Aaron's vocal performance is also very good: the clean vocals in The Ghost of Orion are sorrowful, shaken echoes of a person living a tragedy, while the growls are like both a cry of despair as well as a burst of anger and frustration. Andrew Craighan is always a certainity in providing haunting doom riffs, and he does that perfectly even here. Riffage is perhaps less cavernous and heavy than earlier works, but there is still so much good in them. Lyrics are dark poetry, as is the trademark for MDB. ![]() This is no record that was put together in a haste, but a musical act, a theatre piece. One thing is clear, the making of The Ghost of Orion must have been complicated and thoroughly considered. ![]() You reached the light, the storm is over. "The Old Earth" concludes the journey, at least the perillous part, and we are left with the ethereal "Your woven shore", another instrumental track where you can recover your strenghts from all emotions you faced earlier. After a quiet entry, a majestic, heavy riff shakes you, reminding that this, however emotional it may be, is still a doom metal album. The instrumental piece "The Ghost of Orion" prepares the field for the splendid and powerful "The Old Earth", perhaps one of the best tracks on the album. What follows next is a sort of stasis, with the tracks "The Long Black Land" and the title-track being more of an average quality. "Solace" gives the album a moment of breath, gathering energy for going on along the journey. The voice of Wardruna's Lindy Fay Hella is spot on, providing fantastic atmospheres and such perfect pathos with her angelic tone, breaking the harsh darkness evoked by the three tracks that preceeded it. But here, it's fitting perfectly into the whole narration, and the delicate female voice is just doing what the title says, bringing solace and comforting a struggled soul, anticipating better outcomes. If this song was on any other metal album or even MDB release, it would probably make me frown. While the track before that, "To Outlive the Gods", may represent Aaron's connecting to his daughter in that grim period, "Tired of Tears" is Aaron's own words, his desperation cried out ("lay no hands on my daughter") to whatever is out there, being that God, death, fate, life itself.Īfter the intense start, we have a sudden, unexpected interruption with "Solace". As already stated, you start in a deep state of sorrow, which reaches its peak with the mournful track "Tired of Tears". Personally, I see this album as a journey, or better, a representation in music of the whole concept of recovering not only from sickness and sorrow but also from a moment of deep confusion: the classic "light at the end of the dark tunnel". Yet, the delicate touch on "Your broken Shore" is counterparted by the harsher tone of the chorus, with a raspy growl and aggressive guitar riff, in a perfect MDB style. True, it's quite soft and delicate in its composition but comparisons can be made with similar "delicate" tracks found scattered throughout MDB's discography, for example on Turn Loose the Swans or The Angel and the Black River to cite a couple of very famous works of theirs. "Your broken shore" was the first single out and received some critics of being a little too commercial for MDB standards. But MDB has always been masters of emotions, yet even more so when it's dealing with such personal things. ![]() The first part of the album is very intense, with a general sense of despair and sorrow not easy to overcome. You may see this as a parallel to Aaron's own struggle, from the time in which he risked to loose his child up to her recovery, the return to life and the ease of all fears and sorrows. Where you have something broken in the beginning, you find something mended ( woven) at the end of the journey. This is reflected by the opposite parallels found in the opener, "Your broken shore" and the closer, "Your woven shore". In a sort, this album can be seen as a direct aftermath to this very dark period, where he faced his own daughter's fight against cancer as well as the uttermost fear that no parent wish ever to face: losing a child.Īlthough sprung from such a terrible well of sorrow, The Ghost of Orion is not a depressive album as it celebrates life overcoming death and sickness, hope winning over despair. It has been a while since My Dying Bride released a full-length, and considering the personal struggles occurred in Aaron Stainthorpe's life in the last years, it's fully understandable.
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