Napalm Flesh: My Dying Bride Interview

Welcome to 2012—jump on the wagon with all the doomsayers, who act like they’re just kidding, but are truly afraid this year may be the last for humanity. Please people, spend your savings and act like it’s the end of the world. If you continue to live for tomorrow today is going to pass you by. This new year of our apocalypse we have an interview with a long standing doom spreader himself, vocalist Aaron Stainthrope of legendary UK doom/goth metal band My Dying Bride, who released their new EP The Barghest O' Whitby in November. Also for your apocalyptic fantasies we have reviews of Austrian Death Machine, Brutal Truth, Nightwish, Pestilential Shadows, Vildhjarta and Vise Massacre. Also as usual there’s plenty of metal shows to be had this week/weekend.

Coming up January, Napalm Flesh is looking to be full of black metal with long standing USBM act Krieg, coming to town on Jan. 21. We’ll have an interview with the man behind it all, Imperial. Also in the coming weeks, expect interviews with the potently nasty new east coast black meatl band Pact, and that Abigail Williams band.

Tonight Kilby Court plays host to Mister Richter, Demented Asylum and Castleaxe. A whopping $6 gets you in, tunes underway around 8 p.m.

Friday night the 6th, The South Shore Bar & Grill has touring band Silent Civilian headlining with Mureau, Vengeance, Deny Your Faith, Prosthetic Heads and Downfall. Tickets $10, music at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, CastleAxe plays Burt’s with Visigoth, Toxic Dose and Huldra, $5 gets you in tunes at 9 p.m.

Interview with Aaron Stainthrope of My Dying Bride

SLUG: I want to share my review of your new EP to start things off…

My Dying Bride
The Barghest O' Whitby
Peaceville
Street: 11.15
My Dying Bride = Anathema (old) + Paradise Lost + Mourning Beloveth
“Fevering thoughts all hollow and old - Shivering veins now running cold - When dawns were young and woodland green - And silvery moons as often seen.” This is the My Dying Bride I loved in the earlier days. The band’s last couple full-lengths, A Line of Deathless Kings and For Lies I Sire, were a bit of a misfire for my tastes—they weren’t bad albums by any means, but compared to The Dreadful Hours and The Angel and the Dark River they didn’t showcase the complete depressive depravity and despair that My Dying Bride is famous for. This 27-minute EP is a fresh shot of absolute horror and dread that can only come from My Dying Bride. Barghest really feels like it could’ve come straight from the time that The Dreadful Hours came out. Sharp, heavy guitars are juxtaposed with bone-marrow freezing violin work and vocalist Aaron Stainthrope’s harsh screams and mournful swooning. Complete immersion in the EP can result in feeling exactly as if you’re in the dark seaside moors of Whitby, being stalked by unseen and unspeakable terror. –Bryer Wharton

Obviously the review is opinion based, but what feedback would you give, me the writer from you the musician of what My Dying Bride were trying to capture with the latest EP.

Aaron Stainthorpe: Well the complete immersion bit is spot on as we really want people to indulge in the theme and atmosphere of the music because we’ve worked hard on creating that feeling and that’s because that’s the kind of feeling we are loving right now.

SLUG: Was there any sort of direct inspiration for the EP?
Stainthorpe: As a band we have almost completely ignored the local area surrounding us and so after our recent cover of “Scarborough Fair” we decided to look into the themes of folklore and myth in Yorkshire, The Barghest O’ Whitby being the direct result of that.

SLUG: My Dying Bride has tackled songs that give off elements of horror and dread. The imagery it puts forth truly makes me picture myself in my version of Whitby at night. Imagery is something MDB has always been great at capturing for myself. When you’re playing live or recording do you ever imagine that you’re someplace real or mythical?
Stainthorpe: I do when I’m composing the lyrics and when we rehearse new music, but it’s a bit tricky to really get immersive in the studio when you have to do 500 takes! Live is better because I indulge completely in each character, throwing myself into their invariable mishaps with aplomb. Atmosphere is everything for us and we craft our music for that purpose. We want to take people from the hum drum of the everyday into a different world, even if it is filled with horror and dread, because it’s almost always better than real life.

SLUG: Along that same regard if My Dying Bride could play any location on earth, where would you choose?
Stainthorpe: Easy: the Minack Theatre in Cornwall (www.minack.com) has all the passion and feeling you could ever want from a venue with the added bonus that it overlooks the sea! It’s brilliant there!

Photos:

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Comments on this article

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Andy M

Killer MDB interview!

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