MY DYING BRIDE Guitarist Talks About Songwriting Process For 'A Line Of Deathless Kings'

Justin Donnelly of The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with MY DYING BRIDE guitarist Hamish Glencross. A few excerpts follow:

On the band's latest epic, "A Line Of Deathless Kings":

"We worked hard on 'A Line Of Deathless Kings', so it's great that people are finally able to hear it. We can really start gauging people's response to it. Throughout the whole time of writing the album, we were just falling in love with the album ourselves, so we just hoped that other people would feel the same way. So far, from all the critics and the interviewers that I've spoken to, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. A lot of people have been giving us some great feedback, and it shows just how much they have been listening to the album. There's been comments like, 'This has some of Stainthorpe's best vocal performance he's ever done,' and that's something I completely agree with. They've also commented on the depth and layers of the music itself, and how the contrast has been really turned up, and how we go from extremes to extremes. It just seems that every aspect of what makes up MY DYING BRIDE as to who we are is represented in this album. So the reactions to 'A Line Of Deathless Kings' have been great so far."

On the new album's the diversity:

"It certainly wasn't a conscious move on our behalf. It wasn't like we thought to ourselves, 'Well we haven't done anything like we did on 'As The Flower Withers' (MY DYING BRIDE's 1992 full-length debut),so let's tag this mental ending on here!' It all just came out really natural. It was just how we were feeling, and how the music was going. I think it was just the positive vibe we have in the group these days, which is quite strange considering the miserable music that comes out of us! (Laughs) The working process for this album was just so smooth, and we really felt invigorated with the writing of this album. We also had a new drummer in John Bennett (who replaced Shaun Taylor-Steels earlier in the year after he handed in his resignation due to an ongoing ankle problem),who also brought a lot of enthusiasm and energy to the proceedings."

On whether the band felt any pressure following up the highly successful "Songs Of Darkness, Words Of Light":

"I found 'Songs Of Darkness, Words Of Light' seemed to polarize people quite a bit. They seemed to either absolutely love it, or they simply didn't get into the feel of it at all. I mean I really do love that album, and I think there are some really great moments on there. I think 'A Doomed Lover' is one of those absolute high points of our career. We were also experimenting with different things on there as well. In 'A Doomed Lover', it was the first time that we dropped the tuning right down to B and played in such a different way, which I thought was really cool. But when it came to writing 'A Line Of Deathless Kings', we really didn't think about it in terms of comparing it to the previous album, because the circumstances of how we were creating this album were so different. The writing sessions were instantly showing themselves to have a unique character. We always put pressure on ourselves to try and progress every single time we hit the studio, but that's pressure we put on ourselves. There's that responsibility to live up to those who love and appreciate our work. So we want to please them. Ultimately, we're very responsible to ourselves."

Read the entire interview www.themetalforge.com.