The adage that great art comes from great pain is as much a truth as it is a cliche. In the late 2010s, My Dying Bride have been put through the emotional wringer, and it shows on their 14th album, The Ghost of Orion. After 2015's Feel the Misery, singer Aaron Stainthorpe's five-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer. He immediately curtailed band activity. She went into remission in 2019. In the interim, MDB signed with Nuclear Blast. Even as guitarist Andrew Craighan wrote new material for their label debut, the band lost two members: drummer Shaun Steels was replaced by Jeff Singer, and founding guitarist Calvin Robertshaw quit by text. Further, when the time came to record, Stainthorpe felt so out of it he considered asking Craighan to replace him temporarily. The Ghost of Orion proves that My Dying Bride's decision to leave Peaceville for Nuclear Blast was a beneficial one. Produced by Mark Mynett, these eight tracks offer a maximum dose of crushing, anguished beauty and darkness. Its more "open" sound underscores the band's brutal physical presence. Stainthorpe is in fine voice throughout. Take a listen to opener "Your Broken Shore," with its serpentine distorted guitar lines and his clean and dirty vocals in perfect balance amid swirling strings, keyboards, and clipped tom-toms. Craighan's guitars are massive in their impact; they deliver the focal points of song melodies and enough repetition to meld their completely profound lyricism and crunch. "Tired of Tears" is a dose of the same kind of glacial sorrow that was so redolent on 1995's The Angel and the Dark River, albeit with majesty. "The Solace" is an exercise in electrified dark folk drone and features Wardruna's Fay-Hella on lead vocals. She's accompanied only by Craighan's layered guitars and her own overdubbed chorus. It's a dirge that seeks and delivers a glimmer of hope. Two epic-length tracks are in the set's second half. "The Long Black Shore" and closer "Your Woven Shore" are both over ten minutes. The former emerges with subtle doom before indulging in grandiose sonic architecture that strives only to advance its own sonic power. It's the best example here of My Dying Bride's ability to craft anticipation. Closer "The Old Earth" offers a harrowing guitar-violin interplay locked in tight and weighty, and Craighan's riffs reach a new level of monolithic malevolence and anguish. For a guy who didn't think he had enough left to cut it, Stainthorpe delivers one of his finest vocal outings at the album's nadir. He alternates between full, vulnerable, melodic singing rife with emotion and gratitude, and almost-terrifying guttural growling rage and confusion. On first listen, it is apparent that The Ghost of Orion was born in the aftermath of strife, strain, and fear; but these are balanced by gratitude, endurance, and even benevolence; the conflicting tensions exist with no attempt to alleviate them, and all of these qualities are among the many reasons My Dying Bride has, for more than three decades, reigned at the pinnacle of doom metal. ~ Thom Jurek