The grandfather of gloom; Andrew Craighan of My Dying Bride chats candidly with me about his new album, For Lies I Sire, tours, the happy side of doom metal, the past, the present and of course, the future.
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Crushtor.net: Hey Andrew, how are you? Where are you based at the moment?
Andrew Craighan: I’m quite well thank you. I’m in South Leeds in Yorkshire.
C: Touring? Or just relaxing?
Andrew: Well, there’s no shows planned until the end of May. Well, I’m just relaxing as I might do on, well, this is a Wednesday evening here in England. Just having a quick beer and talking to you lovely people.
C: Well, let’s get started. My Dying Bride (MDB) are one of the first doom bands that emerged on the scene that are still committed to the style. As the “father” of the style, what has kept you together with the “baby” that you’ve now raised from infancy and into maturity while others have shunned the style such as Paradise Lost or Anathema as time went on?
Andrew: The major difference as to why we’ve stayed as we were boils down just after the release of 34.788% Complete. I know we don’t have a lot of time so I’ll try to condense this as best as possible and try and have it make sense.
C: (Laughs) Okay. No worries.
Andrew: Calvin (Robertshaw, former guitarist) left the band. Just prior to that we lost Rick (Miah, former drummer) and Martin (Powell, former keyboardist and violinist) so we were down to fifty percent of the original band in a flash; within 18 months or something like that. The remaining three was myself, Aaron (Stainthorpe, vocalist) and Adrian (Jackson, former bassist) and we said ‘What do we do, this is a catastrophe.’ From a line-up point of view, well, I thought anyway. I wasn’t keen on the idea, but they said ‘we’ll keep going; we’ll keep the name and just continue.’
From this decision making episode, we resolved ourselves to remain doom metal or death metal or whatever you want to call it. It’s going to be bleak, it’s going to be dark, we’re going to be as horrible as we can be and we’re going to be true to the name My Dying Bride from this point forward. No compromise. We’re not interested in anything else, this is who we are and this is what we will do. I think that deliberate decision making back then in 1997 or ’98 has made us who we are. Where as Paradise Lost and Anathema had never been through that; they continued on their progression through various musical styles; for their own reasons, I don’t know what they are.
Andrew continues and allows us a brief insight into the renaissance of MDB.
Andrew: I can certainly remember having the meeting. Without doubt, we sat there and put the cloaks on so to speak; it became a much darker atmosphere around the band and music from that point forward. We’ve sometimes wandered from the path musically in various songs but for the most part we’ve try to keep true to that. I think [the meeting] was without doubt the turning point towards the dark side, if you will, without sounding too cliché. But I guess that’s it.
C: Let’s talk about your new record, For Lies I Sire.
Andrew: Okay. (pause) Which bit? (laughs)
C: I haven’t heard it yet, so I wouldn’t know where to start!
Andrew: Well Okay, I’ll give you some pointers. We reintroduced the violin, which we haven’t used since Like Gods of the Sun, for over ten years. It was a pretty tricky decision because in the beginning, we felt that the violin was an instrument that was very difficult to replace. So if you can imagine when Martin left, we didn’t have one for so long. On this record, it seemed like the right time to bring it back. It was mainly because no one asked us if we were going to. Well, if no one’s asking us to then it makes it our idea again. It just felt like the right time, truth be told. The LP, is kind of – without making it sound obvious and boring – it’s the epitome of what MDB is; it’s brutal in places and massively heavy; almost aggressive, almost horrible in places.
But it’s like that all for the right reasons. It’s as bleak as MDB have ever been, it’s not just boring music either like, ‘Oh my god here comes another riff change after twenty minutes of the same note.’ Its still very musical. It’s typically MDB but without going ‘oh, we don’t need to hear it then, because we already know what they sound like.’ There’s something to this one that I can’t quite put my finger on. To be fair, its probably the most complete record we’ve done musically; everything is in the right places and it all seems to make sense. It’s still very miserable. It’s sort of…sickeningly morose in places. Also it’s overly aggressive for the sake of it in some places.
C: MDB have always had a rich, romanticist, literary tradition. Does the band still draw inspiration from literature? Or other types of art? What’s your creative process like?
Andrew: Well, it’s pretty straightforward really. For me, from the musical sense, I don’t get involved with the lyrics apart from minor stuff here and there; everything influences you, there’s no sort of mystery to it. I don’t just sit in a dark corner and think morbid thoughts and come up with riffs all day. Your life is just one continual collection of influences. I was mentioning earlier to another chap, I guess in MDB its sort of like practicing for real misery. Like, what will I really do when it happens to me? So I was always kind of playing the part, and that’s where the inspiration for me used to come from. Its sort of like we said ‘let’s write something miserable and pretend we understand.’ Then when real tragedy came, and you felt really miserable, genuinely miserable, genuinely upset, there was no inspiration at all. The spark was gone for music and the spark was gone for creating music. When you regain your senses again, I found that writing and playing this music was a great joy.
The influence to do it is because it pleases me. Greatly. I love this style of music. It’s morose and, I’m not a psychologist so I don’t know what that says about me and I don’t understand why, but I draw great pleasure from playing and recording with this outfit. Sounding like this…nothing makes me smile wider. The more miserable we sound, the better I feel.
C: So it’s not a cathartic thing for you, it’s a genuine pleasure.
Andrew: Yeah, I love it. No question about that. If we get something and we go ‘fuck me, that is morose’ or ‘that is heavy’ because we’re primarily a heavy metal band which is something I love, and if we think we’ve come up with something that we would consider ‘uber-doom’ which is ‘beyond doom’…it’s just misery itself and just breaks you in half immediately…we’re over the moon! You know, because this is going to piss everybody off and make them upset. I mean, it seems to work. We’re not the only ones who seem to like this stuff.
C: Well doom metal certainly has a following, there’s no doubt about that. Even for myself, I own a few of your records, and as ‘depressing’ as they sound, I still enjoy them quite a bit.
Andrew: Well, fair enough; every time you put the CD player on, MDB isn’t the band you always go to. I’m the same; I don’t do this twenty-four hours a day. If you’re in that particular zone and you’re in that particular mood, and make sure it’s a good one. Just don’t put one on when you’ve fallen out with your girlfriend. (laughs)
C: Yeah, well...I sort of actually did that once. But let’s move on.
Andrew: (laughs) Yeah kids, don’t try that at home.
C: (laughs) You should put a warning sticker on your albums; do not play during a break up, etc., etc.
Andrew: To be fair, it would probably cause such controversy and double the sales on them and ruin everything.
C: How so?
Andrew: If we ever got into the mainstream limelight it would kill the band. Its due to the fact we’re still very much an unknown quantity; people have heard the name but not everybody knows about us and I think that’s part of the attraction.
C: Talking about that, being an underground band and having stuck with your label, Peaceville, right from the beginning, they seem to be a musician’s label and a music fans’ label, treating them both with the same level of respect. Would that be an accurate assessment?
Andrew: It’s not far away to be honest. They understand what MDB and the other bands on the roster are all about. They don’t ask their bands what they don’t want to do. They don’t take us aside and ask us ‘can you please shorten that song to a three-minute hit, please?’ That would be ridiculous, clearly we’re not the band for you if that’s what you want. They don’t hassle us about artwork or titles or lyrics. They know that they’ve got MDB and that it has its own appeal and it has its own little market somewhere and they’re happy with that. Its the same with the other bands on the roster. So that’s perfect for us.
We haven’t stuck with Peaceville just because of that. Our contract has come up maybe two or three times through the course of our career and we’ve had offers from various other labels. They’ve always been the best one. It’s just that simple, for many many different reasons. They’ve always offered the band; as far as we’re concerned, the best deal and they pretty much leave us to just get on with it. I mean, who wants to be hassled by a record label? They’re not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but as a record label they’re probably the right one for us. We have no intention of changing in the near future.
C: Have you ever wanted to tour Australia?
Andrew: Yeah. Well, its getting to the point where we can’t avoid it. We’ve been asked a number of times and as I’ve mentioned, it’s not financial, it’s not the money that stops us – we get good offers, even as an underground band, we get offers that certainly make it financially viable, to get there and back without spending any of our own money, at least. Its time. That’s the killer. There’s six members in the band plus certain members of the crew we can’t leave behind. Its getting them all together at one point and saying ‘right, we have so many shows to do, and we have to get there and back’ But yes, we’re on our way and without doubt its going to happen. I just can’t tell you when.
C: This year, next year?
Andrew: Please don’t hold me to this, but we’re hoping to be there in the next eighteen months to two years, which is still a massive amount of time. But, considering how long we’ve been going it’s only a minute away.
C: Well, maybe one more question, if the operator doesn’t scold us.
Andrew: She’s pretty cool, actually.
Operator: It’s okay.
C: (laughs) You’re still there! I’d thought you’d left!
Andrew: We’re on first name terms.
C: Well, how have you reacted personally to the term “doom metal” being claimed by the post-hardcore / progressive movement [like bands such as] Electric Wizard or The Sword or what have you? Do you still call that “doom?”
Andrew: I have no idea who the fuck those two bands are.
C: (laughs) They call themselves “doom” but, at least when I think of “doom” I think of the crushing, heavy, oppressive sound. They’re also calling themselves “doom” bands.
Andrew: They certainly don’t register on my doom radar if you know what I mean. Before I make any stupid comments about them I need to listen to them. Doom has so many different faces right now. They may genuinely be a form of doom, it might not be quite how I understand it. I heard about one of these bands supporting someone recently and they seemed to be quite high up the bill and I thought ‘well, I’ve never heard of this outfit.’ But you mentioned their name again. What I’ve always expected is for an American band to turn up and be doom metal and go straight to the charts in mainstream music as “doom.” But some doom bands that have been plodding along for twenty-five years, thirty years get nothing. Then they get classed as “old school doom.” As opposed to the “new wave of doom.” For me, that would be a travesty and a tragedy for the word “doom” to be used in that way. As “pop.”
C: It’s been great talking with you Andrew, I hope to see you in Australia soon.
Andrew: It’s been a pleasure. And I’m not just saying we’re going to tour for the sake of it. It’s something on the cards, its going to happen.
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© Tom Valcanis / Crushtor Media Services, All Rights Reserved. Posted with permission.