A Line Of Deathless [Special Edition]

Ok, I meant to wait until i'd listened to the album a few more times, but in the end I gave in and decided to review it anyway... "A Line of Deathless Kings" is MDB's 9th studio album and although, as most fans would testify, it is impossible to surpass either "Turn Loose the Swans" or "The Angel and the Dark River", the band have done a pretty good job nonetheless. For those who are wondering, the album fits quite neatly into their recent catalogue, progressing nicely from "Songs of Darkness.." with a few throwbacks to "The Light..." and "The Dreadful Hours". Anyone who was hoping for a return to their older style will be disappointed, as will anyone who was expecting the band to make huge leaps in style or substance. On the other hand, this is a very credible effort in the vein of their last few works with some interesting new ideas thrown in as well.

Onto the music... Aaron has continued with the doomy, semi clean vocals he pioneered in the last album with almost no death metal growls. Unfortunately, I have to say his lyrics are not very good on this album. Expect a lot of repetion of very familiar lines and quite a few cliches and painful attempts at rhyming. On the other hand, the music itself is pretty good. Much of it is quite similar to the last couple of albums, but there are a few nice new ideas in places which make the album fun to listen to. Temporary drummer John fills in particularly well, providing some surprisingly excellent drumming throughout and some quite interesting fills which are completely different from either Shaun or Rick's style. The rest of the band are also great, Andy and Hamish proving to have become a musical force to be reckoned with and Ade upping the standard with some fantastic atmospheric bass work. I've never been a fan of Sarah's, but her keyboards are credible and add an exra layer of doom, without ever being particularly prominent in the music as they once were.

The first track, "To Remain Tombless" is quite simply, amazing. It reminds me a little of "the wreckage of my flesh" but its taken to a new level of brilliance with fantastic bass sections, amazing drumming and an absolutely stunning guitar riff that will have you completely hooked. This is followed by "L'amour detruit" which is also particularly good, starting off very similar to "le figlie della tempesta" and comprising a more melodic, almost Katatonia-like section of guitar in the second half, which really makes it stand out. Other good songs are the single, "Deeper Down" which grows on you after a few listens and "Loves Intolerable Pain" which has some quite effective spoken passages and is a bit different from the rest of the album. On the whole, I think most MDB fans will like it although it falls short of being a masterpiece, and anyone who likes good quality doom should give it a try.

I'm a huge fan of My Dying Bride, several of their albums numbering among my all-time favourites, but much of A Line Of Deathless Kings just doesn't for it for me. Looking at the other reviews, I seem to be in something of a minority, but I feel that a great deal of the album is filler and there's something about the composition of the songs that doesn't fit in with the rest of the band's varied catalogue.

I ought to mention that at least three songs on this album are bona-fide 100% classics, alongside tracks like "Here in the Throat" and "A Doomed Lover" as some of the band's very best: the hard-hitting opener "To Remain Tombless", the wandering guitar-fest of "L'Amour Detruit" and the single, "Deeper Down", with an ending so doomy it never fails to make me slightly less upbeat than when it engaged it. The problem with ALoDK, as with '99's The Light at the End of the World is that the majority of the album is bland, full of uninspired playing, overlong songs and familiar melodies. I also noticed maybe three or four phrases that have appeared in countless My Dying Bride songs before. In short, the writing on here is lazy.

While the production is top notch, it does little to alleviate the songs from the dull mire in which they drown. So little of this material deserves to be remembered, or even played live. There is a flash of furious death metal at the album's close which hopefully indicates the direction the next album will take. I don't think my loyalty can take another aimless clean-vocal fest.

I agree with most all the previous reviewers have already said. Like most fans, I believe nothing the band has - until now - produced surpasses "TLTS" in terms of imaginative composing and pioneering of new musical avenues. In that sense, that album was a landmark work. However, ALODK manages to finish and polish all the bits that were not satisfactorily achieved in MDB's previous ouvre.

However, I feel that the songs in this cd could have been better. The opening track is very good and, for me, it sets the standard of what the rest of the songs should have been, but fail to. Nonetheless, I consider the album to very quite good and satisfying in general, although the lyrics are quite "lame"...being far too simple, using too much easy rhymes. I really don't know if this is a lack of inspiration from Aaron or if he's a tad too fond of Shelley's huge load of minor poems (as anyone can attest in his complete works).

I'll just finish by mentioning that this album's artwork is very very good. The digipack edition that I have is a beautiful thing.

I think it's worth the money for any longstanding MDB fans, although they could have pulled a somewhat better effort this time. The songs had the potential to become full epics.