The second album by English doom metal band My Dying Bride opens and closes with almost nothing. The opening track, 'Sear Me MCMXCIII', features only the voice of Aaron Stainthorpe and the violin and keyboards of Martin Powell. The closing song, 'Black God', also strips away guitars, bass and drums entirely. Between those two quiet edges, Turn Loose the Swans, released on 11 October 1993 through Peaceville Records, became one of the boldest statements in heavy music.
Longer songs, slower tempos
This record marked a sharp break from the band's debut, As the Flower Withers. Where that first album was faster and more compact, the new one stretched out: the title track runs past ten minutes, and 'The Crown of Sympathy' reaches twelve minutes and fifteen seconds. The whole album lasts fifty-eight minutes and fifteen seconds. My Dying Bride slowed everything down and let the songs breathe, which made the music feel heavier rather than lighter.
My Dying Bride slowed everything down and let the songs breathe, which made the music feel heavier rather than lighter.
The biggest change was Martin Powell's violin. On the debut it had been a guest colour, but here it became a full part of the band's sound. Aaron Stainthorpe matched that shift with his voice: he moved between a death metal growl, spoken passages and a sorrowful clean singing style. That combination gave the album a theatrical, almost literary weight, and it pointed toward the gothic metal elements that would dominate the band's later records.
Anti-Christian themes and a borrowed poem
The lyrics also changed. Stainthorpe's words on Turn Loose the Swans are less complex than on As the Flower Withers, but they dig into anti-Christian themes and the pain of love. The final song, 'Black God', takes its text from the last eight lines of 'Ah! The Shepherd's Mournful Fate', a poem by the eighteenth-century Scottish poet William Hamilton. A female vocalist named Zena joins Stainthorpe on that track, adding another layer to the album's funeral atmosphere.
Not everyone knew what to make of it at first. American critic Daina Darzin, writing in Rolling Stone, called the album 'Dracula by Bram Stoker for the ears'. That comparison captured both the romance and the dread in the music. The band also made a video for 'The Songless Bird', using slow-motion footage of the group running through wild countryside, which underlined the album's strange mix of elegance and desperation.
Gold certification in 2011
The record was not an immediate commercial blockbuster, but it grew in stature. In October 2011, Turn Loose the Swans received a gold certification from the Independent Music Companies Association. That award meant sales of at least 75,000 copies across Europe. For a doom metal album built on seven long, slow songs, that was a remarkable result, and it confirmed that the band had found an audience far beyond the usual metal underground.
The album's influence has been just as important as its sales. Turn Loose the Swans is now seen as a key milestone in the development of death-doom metal. It showed that a band could remove the usual speed and aggression and still sound crushing. It also opened the door for the gothic metal wave that followed, with its emphasis on melody, sorrow and dramatic contrast. My Dying Bride did not invent sadness in metal, but on this record they gave it a new shape.
Thirty-three years on, the album still stands as a complete artistic statement. It was written and arranged entirely by the band, with production by the group and Robert 'Mags' Magoolagan. The lineup on the record included Stainthorpe, Powell, guitarists Andrew Craighan and Calvin Robertshaw, bassist Adrian Jackson and drummer Rick Miah. Together they made an album that begins with a single voice and a violin, and ends with a poem from another century.