The last My Dying Bride album I heard was 1999s The Light at the End of the World which I thought was a quite magnificent slab of doom and gloom and is an album I tend to revisit every now and then. For whatever reason I never bothered with the albums that came after and returned to the band after a gap of ten years and three more albums.

Unfortunately, I would have been perfectly fine if I’d never bothered with For Lies I Sire. This is mostly a dull and boring album and the band is mostly trying to rehash past glories while laying on a thick, almost impenetrable layer of cheese on top of their doom metal. Now, long time fans of the band will know that MDB has always had a slight gothic cheese bent to their songwriting. Unfortunately, where before that element of the band was held in check with some crushingly heavy songs, here it seems to have been given free rein.

Right from album opener Fall with Me, it’s apparent that the band is running on empty. The song sounds like something that could have been on Angel and the Dark River except that it’s a bit too cheesy for even that album (Caress me, undress me, forget me as winter comes, your pale skin, crystal eyes I will weep forever, oh my god why?) and when a slowed down Iron Maiden gallop comes in at halfway through, it’s just a bit embarrassing. Aaron Stainthorpe’s mostly uses his nasal whiny clean singing voice through this album and while that is one of the main weaknesses on this album it is not the only one. The songwriting on a whole suffers from ideas that have been rehashed from past albums and riffs that can only be called weak. It’s also a bit pointless to talk about individual songs because by the time you get round to the title song (which is third on the list) the songs have already taken on a similar feel and everything dissolves into background noise.

Aaron Stainthorpe and Andrew Craighan (guitars) are the only original members left in the band and I honestly think it’s time for them to take a break. For Lies I Sire sounds like the product of a tired band that is scraping the bottom of the creative barrel.

Label - Peaceville
Year of Release - 2009