MY DYING BRIDE Dreadful Hours CD 2001

There's a moment on Dreadful Hours where the violin drops in and you realise My Dying Bride have made exactly the album they wanted, and it's bleak in all the right ways. Released in 2001 on Peaceville, this is the Bradford quartet mid-stride, having shed the death-doom extremes of their earlier work and leaned fully into a sound that feels like a Victorian funeral in the rain.

Gothic doom doesn't get more foundational than this. Dreadful Hours is the kind of record that rewards patience, the kind of album where the slow burn is entirely the point. Aaron Stainthorpe's vocals move between a mournful croon and something closer to a confession, while the guitar work sits somewhere between Paradise Lost and a really long argument with God. Essential listening for anyone who takes the dark aesthetic seriously.

CD. Full length album. UK import. Genre: Gothic / Doom / Death Metal.

Fans of: KATATONIA, PARADISE LOST, CANDLEMASS, NOVEMBERS DOOM