My Dying Bride

• Genre: Doom Metal
• Hometown: Halifax, West Yorkshire
• My Dying Bride Website

About

In the early and mid 1990s, along with fellow Northern Englanders Paradise Lost and Anathema, My Dying Bride formed the third prong in the emergence of doom metal. Over the course of their first three albums, the band took Tony Iommi's most torpid riffological ideas and applied to them both doleful strings and the grunting giant vocals of Aaron Stainthorpe, and then tossed revved up death metal breakdowns into the middle of it all, birthing a new form of metal in the process. With the release of The Angel and the Dark River, in 1996, however, Bride dropped the death-grunt vocals and took their already flowery music in a more gothic direction. A series of albums followed, further distancing the band from their original fanbase and eroding their critical standing, but with 2001's The Dreadful Hours, My Dying Bride seemingly came full circle and returned to the pure heaviness they made their name with. The band continues to put out records, with A Line of Deathless Kings appearing in 2006.

- Mike McGuirk