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1.  The Barghest O’ Whitby

Total playing time:  27:04

Release Date: November 7th 2011
Label: Peacville Records

My Dying Bride - The Barghest O’ Whitby

Reviewer: Garett

January 24, 2012

As a long time My Dying Bride fan, I was greatly disappointed by “For Lies I Sire.” To me it marked one of the low points of their career, and following it with the disjointed and seemly pointless Evinta release could have served as the death blow to my interest in new material from the band. “The Barghest O’ Whitby” is a one song EP that came out near the end of 2011, and it provides a ray of hope for fans on the brink of disenchantment with the band.

This 27 minute long song is the most heavy and raw sounding material that My Dying Bride have released since “The Dreadful Hours.” The song’s slow-building intro leads up to the heavy, death vocal driven first verse. The song certainly starts out on the right foot, and continues in this direction for five minutes before we see Aaron Stainthorpe employ his clean vocals. The vocals shift gears along with the music, which becomes more melodic at this point. This clean section of the album runs until about the 14:00 minute mark, and does a great job of channeling the vibe of the band’s classic “The Angel and the Dark River” album. The song fades to a lonely guitar strum before building into its second half. What comes next is a solid ten minutes of classic sounding My Dying Bride material, good, but nothing to get overly excited about. And then just as things are starting to drag, The Barghest O’ Whitby takes it’s most interesting turn; a five minute long section of near full-on death metal. I immediately thought of The Forever People from “As the Flower Withers,” and really started to feel excited about where this band might go with their next album.

It wasn’t just the renewed focus on their heavier side that had me excited either. I really liked the contributions of violinist/keyboardist Shaun MacGowan. The violin has been in and out of My Dying Bride’s sound for a number of years now, but I don’t think that they have really used it to its full potential since Martin Powell’s departure from the band. Here the violin serves an important role and really adds something to the song without ever getting in the way. I was also really impressed by the smooth transitions between the EP’s different sections.

“The Barghest O’ Whitby” isn’t without issues. The song drags in a few spots, and is maybe ten minutes longer than it needs to be. Also, while Stainthorpe’s death vocals remain effective, he seems to have lost something in this department over the years. These are not game-breaking issues though, and overall I enjoyed “The Barghest O’ Whitby” a great deal. This is a good EP, and if nothing else, it reminded me that My Dying Bride are still capable of coming up with material that does their legacy justice.