ShadowHaunt

She already knows how this will all end
The wounds of memory she tends
Ghost and strangers
She flees her own grief
Forever running
Haunted she sleeps
In shadows she lays all alone
Remembering her lover gone
Through forests she walks every day
Through winter storms, every day
She looks through dark eyes
Over her shoulder
She already knows when
When it will find her

I'm coming, keep running
Tormenting you!
Hastily do you flee
I'm coming! I'm coming!
My dear, I'm here
All shadow and sorrow
I have thee, finally
Embracing you!
Young lover, it's over
Together and never!

- My Dying Bride (2009)

I received For Lies I Sire, the latest album from England's My Dying Bride, just a couple of weeks ago from Amazon.com. I finally got to listen to it a few days later and instantly fell in love with it. Since I write reviews for albums, I listen to A LOT of new music. As such, there are few albums that make a lasting impression on me, but this is one of them. In fact, 2009 has already given me 2 albums that have made my heavy rotation. In the first 6 months of the year I would say that's a pretty good year for my musical taste.

To those unititiated, My Dying Bride plays a slow brand of metal often referred to as Doom Metal. Similar to early Black Sabbath, the songs move along at a slow pace. The tone set by these songs ranges from darkness to eerie to colossal sadness to what some would consider clinical depression. Add some violins and the songs become funeral dirges.

This is another song in 2 acts. What sets this song apart is the fact that Act I is in the third person where Act II is in the first person. Both points of view focus on a lady. In the Humanities often a concept of importance is referred to in the feminine. Given the vague nature of the lyrics, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to consider the lady in this song a metaphor for things that are happening today.

When I first listened to this song, for some reason it brought to mind historical women such as Ann Boleyn, St. Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette, and even Ethel Rosenberg. Their crimes - treason (Boleyn), heresy (Joan of Arc), being married to King Louis XVI (Antoinette), and espionage (Rosenberg) - earned each of them a death sentence. Act I tells us that they know they are facing death and the torment that runs in their mind over the fact that they know their end is imminent. When the end finally comes, it announces its presence and leaves no question what is happening. The part of the young lover would be most applicable to Ann Boleyn, as she was the young lover of King Henry VIII.

That was the first thing that came to mind when I heard the song and read the lyrics. What is your first impression, Mardi?