Band: My Dying Bride
Title: An Ode To Woe
Label: Peaceville Records
Distribution: Bertus Distribution
Release date: 28/04/2008
Review: CD + DVD

An Ode To Woe is a live registration, done in April last year at the famous Paradiso in Amsterdam, Holland (their former live-album, by the way, was also recorded in the Netherlands, Tilburg to be ore precisely), where also bands as Nirvana, The Sex Pistols, Nick Cave or The Rolling Stones performed. The nice digi-book contains both the CD and DVD of this remarkable concert, with a total of respectively twelve (CD) and thirteen (DVD) tracks. Original members Aaron Stainthorpe and Andrew Craighan, along with Hamish Glencross, Sarah Stanton, Lena Abé and Dan Mullins (known from The Axis Of Perdition and Bal Sagoth), bring tracks from the complete My Dying Bride history. The concert opens with To Remain Tombless from their latest album, A Line Of Deathless Kings, and it immediately sets the tone for this compilation. Aaron isn’t the best singer ever, especially when it comes to his ‘clean’ voice, yet it does not bother one single moment. Besides, he isn’t the most energetic front man either, he doesn’t run or jump around whole the time, but that isn’t necessary at all with this melancholic Doom-superiority. He also gives the impression of being completely gone in some psychotropic sphere. I hope he did enjoy it! Besides his clean singing, mourning, whispering and sighting, Aaron also shows the more ‘brutal’ side of his throat by grunting and screaming (cf. She Is The Dark, Catherine Blake etc.) and at those moments, believe me, Aaron seems to move a little!. The performance by the other members also is superb when it comes to their musical skills. Melancholy versus heaviness, doom versus mid-tempo, sadness versus anger, all typical My Dying Bride elements are part of this musical trip. Each single album the band did already record is presented by at least one song, among which their 1992-debut As The Flower Withers, where the bonus song (on the DVD - not included on the CD-version of An Ode To Woe) comes from and indeed, this track, The Forever People, may be their slowest ever, haha, and that’s a nice ending of this splendid live performance.

--/100

Ivan Tibos.