5. My Dying Bride - Turn Loose The Swans
Track List: 1. Sear Me MCMXCIII 2. Your River 3. The Songless Bird 4. The Snow in My Hand 5. The Crown of Sympathy 6. Turn Loose the Swans 7. Black God
Recommended Track: The Songless Bird, increasing the tempo elevates this track into a Doom/Death classic and Aaron Stainthorpe's death vocals are postively feral. Mournful, melancholy and morbid, Turn Loose The Swans is a masterpiece from a band who have defiantly followed their singular vision. Bravely dispensing with guitar entirely on two of the seven tracks, the melodrama is increased with sparse use of piano and violin and Aaron Stainthorpe's versatile vocals, which alternate between Death Metal growls, the spoken word and a singing voice that wouldn't sound out of place at a funeral. It is the moments where the band devolve into almost ambient silence that provide the most compelling chills and it is this unique use of dynamics that truly propels this album to classic status. When the band shift gear and break from their morbid, eloquent eulogy's into ferocious, sometimes industrial-esque, death metal, I guarantee the hairs on the back of your neck
will stand on end.