My Dying Bride

European goth metal band My Dying Bride formed in June 1990. The four-piece first recorded the demo tape Towards the Sinister, and after the release of a 7" single for the French Listenable label, the group signed to Peaceville Records in 1991. My Dying Bride's first release was a 1991 EP, Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium. Debut album As the Flower Withers appeared the following year, and after touring Great Britain and Europe, the band released another EP, The Thrash of Naked Limbs. Third album Turn Loose the Swans coincided with another European tour, after which the band disappeared for a year. In the meantime, Peaceville issued a box set titled The Stories as well as the three-EP compilation Trinity.

My Dying Bride returned later in 1995 with The Angel and the Dark River, also available in a double pack with a live EP. The band's fourth album, Like Gods of the Sun, appeared in late 1996; 34.7888%...Complete followed two years later, and My Dying Bride was issued in early 2001, along with The Dreadful Hours. After Songs of Darkness, Words of Light in 2004 and just prior to the release of A Line of Deathless Kings in 2006, drummer Shaun Taylor-Steels departed the group due to health concerns. He was followed by bassist Adrian Jackson in 2007, as well as session drummer John Bennett. My Dying Bride rounded out the group with Lena Abé (bass) and Dan Mullins (drums). They released An Ode to Woe in 2008, with For Lies I Sire arriving the following year.

In 2011, MDB celebrated their 20th anniversary by releasing Evinta. The album, it was claimed, was 15 years in the making and resulted in a double-CD (and special edition triple-CD) collection of all new music, arranged "to the soundscapes of sorrows past and hopeless futures." Frontman Aaron Stainthorpe recorded new vocals to some older melodic and textural ideas with help from French soprano Lucie Roche. Evinta's material was arranged by keyboardist Jonny Maudling (Bal-Sagoth), who co-produced the album with Stainthorpe and guitarist Andrew Craighan. ~ John Bush, Rovi