There was something strangely apt about listening to this record on the way home from work the other day. I work in the countryside. It was misty, drizzly, getting a bit chilly, it’s November.
Those are the perfect conditions for My Dying Bride. They exist solely in this format. They are made for misty, windswept moors in Autumn. The Yorkshire grit of their home of West Yorkshire is still pumping round their veins.
But they are in a rich seam of creative form too. No rest for the wicked, perhaps? Whatever, “Macabre Cabaret” comes barely six months after their fabulous full length “The Ghost Of Orion” and it finds them at their most grandiose.
The title track is a 10 minute thing, wonderfully ominous. The keyboards so full of foreboding, the crushing doom, the vocals from Aaron Stainthorpe that are less singing more incantations summoning up who knows what?
In short, if you could bottle what has been the essence of MDB for 30 years, it’s this. Right here.
“….Cabaret” is, In Stainthorpe’s words [a look] into the shadow empire of dark love and the consequences of unchecked sexuality.” “Secret Kiss” takes things even deeper than that, to investigate the shadowy figures that emerge in religion before death. The music, so heavy, so oppressive, matches it perfectly and Andrew Craighan’s guitar is a big part of that.
The last one, “A Purse Of Gold And Stars” is hauntingly fragile. If there’s always been a kind of folk element to the granite hard sound, then this is why. It floats, poetically, but there is a nightmare to these dreams, no deep sleep. No calmness. Only bleakness.
Oddly, after the EP had finished and I got home, there was a discussion on the radio news about the apparent disco revival, at which one of the contributors said: “I think its to do with the times, people need cheering up more than ever.”
That’s one way to go, I guess. For the rest of us, those who like something beyond the merely superficial there is “Macabre Cabaret.” And it truly is a command performance.
Rating 8.5/10
