In a recent interview with the U.K.’s Devolution magazine, Aaron Stainthorpe, the vocalist of the English doom metal pioneers MY DYING BRIDE, was asked about the recent announcement that he and his bandmates were canceling all of their previously scheduled 2024 tour dates.
“We’ve worked relentlessly in MY DYING BRIDE — without a manager. Me and [guitarist] Andrew [Craighan] managed the band as best we could over the years,” he responded (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “We’ve had people interested in managing, but it’s never really [panned out]. And sometimes when you’re doing the admin, it really takes away from the artistic side of things. You’ve got tax men to deal with and politics and blah, blah, blah. And me and Andy, we’ve argued the toss like a married couple for years and years and years — artwork, lyrics.
“I normally pretty much get away with lyrics, but artwork particularly. And I think we’re both becoming grumpy old men. We’ve just got a bit loggerheaded like that. We said, ‘Let’s take a break before we have a massive bust-up.’ Even though it’s a rubbish time to take a break because the album is just coming out. But everyone just thought, ‘You two just take your breather. Take some time away. It happens to loads of bands. And then come back.'”
“It’s a bad time to take [a break],” Aaron continued. “We’d had gigs booked and everything. And I apologize profusely to people who bought tickets and were coming to see us. But we just needed a break before we blew our heads off. So we’re taking a breather.”
Aaron clarified that his involvement with his side project, HIGH PARASITE, had no connection to MY DYING BRIDE‘s decision to take a break.
He said: “I know some people are going to say, ‘Oh, is it because of HIGH PARASITE?’ Well, HIGH PARASITE has been going for three years. So how can it be HIGH PARASITE? It’s not HIGH PARASITE. MY DYING BRIDE have huge gaps in the things that we do — three years between albums, 12 shows a year. I can fit three or four more bands in those spaces, no problem whatsoever. So HIGH PARASITE‘s got nothing to do with it whatsoever.
“We’re just taking a breather because if we don’t, MDB will be over. When we come back — we don’t know yet. We will be coming back. I just don’t know when. But weirdly, the timing is almost perfect for me because HIGH PARASITE, it’s like one door closes, another one opens. And it’s just, like, this is amazing. I’ve got more breathing room than I expected I would have.”
MY DYING BRIDE‘s latest studio album, A Mortal Binding, was released on 19 April 2024 through Nuclear Blast.
A Mortal Binding, the much-anticipated follow-up to The Ghost of Orion (2020) finds the Yorkshire-based quintet delighting in anxiety, loss, and toil to resplendent effect. From the raw distress of ‘Her Dominion‘ and twisted horror of ‘Thornwyck Hymn’ to the funerary violins of the 11-minute monolith ‘The Apocalyptist’ and the classic-feeling ‘The 2nd of Three Bells’, A Mortal Binding is pinnacle MY DYING BRIDE. If Songs of Darkness, Words of Light (2004) elevated the band to new heights and A Map of All Our Failures (2012) expanded upon the group’s mid-tens grandeur, then A Mortal Binding stages MY DYING BRIDE’s next exultant phase of elegiac misery.
MY DYING BRIDE hired The Ghost of Orion studio wizard Mark Mynett to produce, mix, and master A Mortal Binding. The group holed up at Mynett’s Mynetaur Productions (PARADISE LOST, ROTTING CHRIST) in Manchester, UK, where they tracked the album consecutively from July to September 2023.
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