By Greg Northrup

            A solid album, but doesn't quite carry the same immediate emotional impact that past masterpieces like Turn Loose The Swans and Like Gods Of The Sun did. The absence of a violin player, an ingredient so essential to My Dying Bride's past, is detrimental to the album. Because of this line-up change, the music seems to have taken on a slight shift in direction.

            The songs are, for the most part, satisfyingly doomy but some new electronic textures are noticable and not entirely effective.Every song is good except for the experimental failure "Heroin Chic" which is almost painful to listen to. Other than that, the album flows well from song to song and is pretty consistent throughout.

            One of the things that I used to love about My Dying Bride was how the violin used to counter or accentuate the guitar and vocal melodies. This heart wrenching effect is noticably absent on this release, and while the riffs are good, you can almost pick out parts of songs where a violin would have sounded great. My feeling is that this is really a transistional record. I would look for My Dying Bride to, in the future, use electronic textures and keyboards to effectively replace the emotional effect of the absent violin and come up with some incredible music.