My Dying Bride - Like Gods of the Sun (1996)

For a while I passed up listening to this album along with 'The Angel and the Dark River' as I had erroneously figured that since Aaron had completely dropped the death metal vocals the band's music must somehow suck now. Then one day it dawned on me that "you know what? 'Turn Loose the Swans' was largely (though not entirely) devoid of Aaron's growls and that album is one of my favorites", so I decided to check this out after all and once I had I began to feel rather stupid for having written them off.

'Like Gods of the Sun' actually reminds me a bit of Celtic Frost. The pace is picked up a bit from the previous two albums though not considerably so as there no blasts or anything of the sort. Hell, 'As the Flower Withers' had faster songs.

To a degree this album could be viewed as the band's "Black album" as you can tell that they were more interested in writing shorter, catchier tunes than ever before. There are no drawn out riff sequences here and the band rather successfully manages to string together a great bunch of memorable licks and lyrics to boot.

Album closer 'For my Fallen Angel' is easily one of the saddest and most depressing songs you'll hear in your life and I mean that in the best way possible.

Overall a great album and a rather welcome break from the band's usual snail's pace, though in all fairness "The Bride" are hardly a one trick pony and really haven't released a bad album in their twenty something year career. Bravo.