review  by Sara "Shadow Lady" De Vita____     

At last the long waited work from the English My Dying Bride!!!

They don't disappoint  our expectations, and here enters “Songs Of Darkness Words Of Light”. Evident is the return to sounds like “The Angel And The Dark River”, reconciling the Doom-like sound with the ever innovative style of an eternal band.

8 tracks…intense, passionate, with dirge-like and decadent keyboard lines that walk together with smooth guitars and riffs that are extreme in their heaviness.

Always impeccable the vocal work by Aaron that embodies a painful consciousness of agony. A rhythm by Shaun that drives as a march, merging with the “leaden” guitars, only to sink in the gloomy atmosphere of “The Wreckage of my Flesh”.

Sounds float in “The Scarlet Garden”: a song that ripples as the waters of a lake hit by a pebble.

Rounded and cadenced musicalities, up to exaggeration; tempo and clean’n growl voice passes that dress up this song, and the following “Chaterine Blacke” as well, of the black shroud of unbearable survival to the suffering of the soul.

“I have no tears, beautiful thing (…) so ends this tale you did not win”.

The CD develops into “My Wine In Silente”, sound extremely English, that reproduces a simple – yet incisive - song: a delicate search for a love lost in the solitude.

Very essential sounds that concentrate on repeated refrains of rhythm for the whole song, leaving to Aaron’s voice the true expressivity.

We return to leaden anguish with “My Prize Of Beauty”, the most beautiful and heterogeneous song in the whole album: voluptuous arpeggios that underline the grace of an evanescent and unreachable beauty.

More incisive return the keyboards of Sarah allowing the lift-off of the song towards the dark skies of the doom music.

Very good the vocal intermissions, almost weeping, remarking the impotence lament.

There’s no rescue in this album: just surrender to the unavoidable…

We proceed towards “The Blue Lotus”, song that mostly recalls, chief of all for the guitar’n’vocal work, “34,788…% complete”: distorted guitars that insinuate between cadenced riffs, like snakes in the sand…a sinuous movement amidst the compact structure of a sedimented sound…a simple work of genius!

Aggressive in its intents is “and My Fury Stand Ready”. Ferocious in the lyrics, avenging, yet never achieving; all this expressed by a repetitive and timely drum work (as a serial killer) that never allows imperfections as it walks the path of the assassin.

Background effects further darken an already dark atmosphere…

And as the song flows, we plunge into the darkness of a gaol between whose bars a dark will lurks, expressed in the last line of the song: “In my face see your killer. You can wish me away. In your face i still see her. No more shall you betray. In her face (she) saw her killer. Thou shalt no pray”.

The album ends with “My doomed Lover”…distortions that lead on an unquiet rhythm. “Calm these tides of sorrow”…perfectly describes this song.

And again My Dying Bride please our ears…

Rating: 9/10

Sara De Vita  

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