My Dying Bride

For Lies I Sire (Peaceville)
By Mike Delano

Sometimes the term “doom” in the metal world means crushingly heavy, slooow, head-nodding-in-slow-motion-with-your-eyes-closed type stuff. The imagery conjured up amidst this dark trance is oftentimes apocalyptic, with society crashing down from the viewpoint of a gleeful observer. My Dying Bride takes a more personal, micro-level approach to doom (see Crowbar, Eyehategod). Theirs is more akin to the sound of your life draining slowly from your veins on a bed of black roses (histrionics fully intentional). Like Mr. Skin, they fast-forward to the good parts, the good parts being the slow decay at the end of your life before you trust fall into the Reaper’s arms. Funerals seem positively lively compared to this stuff, but not as honest. The meat of For Lies I Sire is a string of captivating dirges rendered with the aforementioned glee that one has when celebrating all things morbid (there’s a track called “Death Triumphant”). There are only brief hints of a larger conflict: The churning guitars of “Fall With Me” score the “armies of salvation laid to waste”; the propulsive drums of “Bring Me Victory” push forward to “no more misery.” But even the black metal snarl at the beginning of “A Chapter in Loathing” can’t disguise what all the moping is really about: Chicks. Nothing on For Lies I Sire can touch the towering “Santuario Di Sangue,” filled as it is with groveling, prostration, desire, and “feminine doom.”
(www.peaceville.com)