With Doom/death metal legends My Dying Bride unveiling their 15th album, A Mortal Binding, today via Nuclear Blast I recently caught up with My Dying Bride Riff Master Andrew Craighan for Crannk and Cranium Radio to talk all about the latest epic.
Sales Link: https://mydyingbride.bfan.link/a-mortal-binding
The much-anticipated follow-up to The Ghost of Orion (2020) finds the Yorkshire-based quintet—featuring a revamped lineup of now-permanent guitarist Neil Blanchett and the return of drummer Dan Mullins—delighting in anxiety, loss, and toil to resplendent effect. From the raw distress of “Her Dominion” and twisted horror of “Thornwyck Hymn” to the funerary violins of the 11-minute monolith “The Apocalyptist” and the classic-feeling “The 2nd of Three Bells,” A Mortal Binding is signature My Dying Bride. If Songs of Darkness, Words of Light (2004) elevated the Brits to new heights and A Map of All Our Failures (2012) expanded upon the group’s mid-tens grandeur, then A Mortal Binding stages My Dying Bride’s next exultant phase of elegiac misery.
“This album was much easier than The Ghost of Orion,” says vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe. “We were coming out of cancer with my daughter. That, naturally, was always playing on my mind throughout the recording. When the album was released, the world went into lockdown. Everything went dark. We didn’t know what to do next. Of course, we released the Macabre Cabaret EP, which was recorded at the same time as The Ghost of Orion, to keep interest up. We could finally gig a bit when the world opened up again. Only then could we begin, in earnest, the songwriting for A Mortal Binding.”
