My Dying Bride – A Map Of All Our Failures

How can anyone start a review for one of the most anticipated albums of a quite productive year such as 2012? Well, I’ve come up with my start…A sincere and simple question : Was “A Map of all our Failures” the new My Dying Bride album, worth the wait?  Simple as it seems, the answer will not be obvious to anyone that has been following this band’s steps for so many years.

After their celebration release of “Evinta” which suggested a rather different view of some of their most famous tunes, MDB got into the process of releasing an etended long song under the name “ The Barghest O’ Whitby” which really blew everyone’s expectations up as it rewinded everyone’s thoughts to their early days with its raw material and sound. Having this in mind all fans of their music were quite interested on what did the future hold for them.

Afterwards, there came the first taste from “ A Map…” the song entitled “Kneel till Doomsday” which really happened to be breath-taking. But it wasn’t until we had the complete album in our hands, that we could be sure what it was all about.

The process Eject-Place CD-Close-Read-Play cannot be described lesser than exciting and precious. Although, somewhere around the third track (A Tapestry Scorned) I really stopped listening. I couldn’t realise when a song ended and when another started. That was weird. Second listening session followed the same way, as did all sixteen following ones. Alright then, some might say, this sounds too much, to my ears though, in full honesty “A Map..” really goes on from where “For Lies I Sire” stopped.

Nine songs that sound similar and in a certain direction of mid/slow tempos, a few breaks that seem as a drop in the ocean. Their familiar guitar duets mourning endlessly, the violin appearing in some parts having the simplest role of just colouring the wall of sound and actually doing nothing at all. Even the return of Shawn Steels behind the kit didn’t do any strong difference at all. Aaron’s performance stands up in high standards but I can say that his preference to sing most of his parts instead of giving us equal amounts of his brilliant brutal vocals really gets me somehow tired as the record passes by.

Loving their miserable and mourning past releases as a fan, I can’t say I embraced this record as one of their tops, even if it had the prospects of being such one. There’s a sense of “playing on stady ground” on the latest MDB releases and this might as well mean that they have to come up with something to enrich their songs in order to regain the true interest for their music.

MDB cannot and will never fail anyone. This is a belief I’ve come up with after listening carefully every one of their releases. It seems now and then they need to readjust to surface their best faces. This time they didn’t do anything like that, but they will never fail us and keep in mind…The Return of the beautiful will surely come someday soon…