Evinta

Evinta doesn’t evince or convince. The ideas are ideas that sound like ideas but don’t actually have any content. It’s quite easy to spend a few weeks in a laptop-enabled modern music studio and come up with hour after hour of music that sounds atmospheric and meaningful, but without editing, and self-awareness, it all just tumbles down the hill and claws its way halfway back up, for no reason other than masochism or pretension. The opera singing from Roche is quite good but not elite level, and Stainthorpe's spoken word parts are nearly all tedious. If he had actually stepped outside himself to contribute vocals he was learning on the go, it would have worked better, but instead we get a pastiche of his usual lyrics, and none of the groaning, moaning, hyperbolic semi-genius he usually brings.

So, Evinta is essentially soundtrack music by My Dying Bride, for My Dying Bride, but forgetting the listener, the listener who pays the bills and has only finite listening time. You need 6 ears to appreciate Evinta. Too many ideas, not enough ideas, bloat, tedium, occasional quite beautiful moments, such as the martial theme with plucked strings, and the certain emotional depth on Lilies Bent with Tears. Overall, this kind of sprawling narrative can only work if you have the content to fill it all up. My Dying Bride include pieces of their own older material in a new format on Evinta, and it’s a certain kind of fun hearing them pop up randomly, but there’s no rhyme or reason to it other than appeasing fan-expectations. Fans just expect good music, you don’t have to bribe them with memories of past glories.

The lyrics on Evinta are both typical My Dying Bride lyrics, and also only lesser-echoes of themselves. Maybe without the contrast of doom metal couching Stainthorpe's verbiage, there’s a revelation of triteness and cliché? The Distance, Busy With Shadows, (choose a fucking song title) starts with excellent atmospheric samples and interesting programming ideas akin to mid-90s Future Sound of London. Actually, spotting the influences on Evinta is more fun than listening to the actual music, itself a hotchpotch of sort of O.K. bits and pieces but few coherent songs, few stand-alone musical ideas. As well as F.S.O.L., you can hear touches of The Smiths, New Order, and even Katatonia’s 00s work. Even the album art for Evinta is essentially just a Katatonia album cover from 2000-something.

So between Maudling’s decent but uninspiring orchestration, under-honed opera singing, thin spoken word passages, 80s and 90s U.K. influences from shoe-gaze and trance, and borrowing their own melodies, what does My Dying Bride offer on Evinta? Well, if you were on substances of various kinds, and had 3 hours to sit in darkness and indulge your early 20s self, Evinta could be quite a musical journey, but for the rest of us, you can go on a musical journey in 65 minutes, cut the flab, make your case, condense your ideas, commit to something, anything.

On the plus side, there are enjoyable touches of English folk music, moments of Clannad’s more generalised British Isles melancholy, and, as a side project of Stainthorpe and Craighan, Evinta could be allowed more leeway. The random introduction of 90s U.K. trance influences is quite enjoyable, and you wish the full My Dying Bride had made a single C.D. of doom metal meets 90s atmospheric electronica, instead of all that, plus an opera singer, and a soundtrack to a non-existent film, background vibes for a mediocre video game, and the kitchen-fucking-sink too. Make a proper doom album, get Enya to do some guest vocals, problem solved.

That Dress and Summer Skin is a Morrissey cast-off, with pseudo-portentous keyboards, and too much breathing room rather than not enough. And Then You Go is a late highlight, a little shorter, a little more direct, and doing the simple things right: orchestration, opera singer, that’s it, stop, that’s all you need. In the few instances where Evinta actually reels itself in and performs a smaller number of tricks proficiently, there’s the shadow of a great album here. If it had been done properly, Evinta could have knocked the socks off the metal community, and made waves in mainstream music circles also.

The clutter on Evinta is tragic, the near-misses, the half-formed ideas, the strong hand of Maudling, the absence of metal instrumentation when there should have been some, the redundancy of Stainthorpe on his own project....what was it all for? 30% of Evinta is really good atmospherics, and they could have been put to use on a normal length album of focussed melancholy. The good moments, the tributes to other music genres from different decades, the bravery to make your own band the minor aspect on your own album, all wasted in a morass of ponderous, sometimes evocative, but mostly hollow, drifting.

Evinta should be more than an above-average soundtrack for an Xbox-360 open-world fantasy game, but that’s the overall level Craighan, Stainthorpe, and Maudling’s ideas fall to to here. Hints of originality and deep mystical emotion, made cheap by lack of focus, lack of shape, lack of message. Vanité Triomphante is the only track on Evinta where everything works from start to finish; nearly all the other songs are either nothing at all, or randomly interesting for the wrong reasons.

Overall, with this amount of music, there should be more than 2-3 actual songs, songs of meaning, songs with a purpose. The take-away sentiment of Evinta is that feeling of sadness at a church carol evening in December where the initial gut-punch of spiritual grief/wonderment is replaced by inadequacy, sickliness, and the sense that it’s not enough to sound beautiful, you must have the existential depth to back it up. Evinta doesn’t.

I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to contribute to the review collection of this strange and curious release from the mighty My Dying Bride, especially as it has received some very harsh criticism.

I’d like to argue that the release is actually a welcome addition to the My Dying Bride oeuvre, albeit one that is very reliant on the correct listening context and the mood of the listener.

It’s a long album – there’s no getting around it. I’m reviewing the 2CD edition and even that is a mighty 87 minutes long; an epic listening experience by any measure. I can only hold in awe anyone able to sit through the full three disk version. As a work that is essentially ambient in nature, with no guitars, bass or drums to be found, there are not many opportunities for expelling any visceral energy, and I can empathise with fans who have found the whole project to be a bridge too far with its soundscapes, strings, and melodic moments that later disappear with the breeze. When I first purchased this back in 2011 (gosh time flies…) I largely felt the same, dismissing it as an experiment that failed.

However, at 40 years old I’m really coming around to this as a concept and as a musical work. The general standard of the production, courtesy of Jonny Maudling and Andrew Craighan, is actually very high. The swelling string sounds and the various musical accoutrements, like violin, voice and digital classical instruments, create a rather beautiful atmosphere of peace and melancholy. I don’t recoil from the standard of the sound in the same way that I do with Cradle of Filth’s similar experiment in ‘Midnight in the Labyrinth’, which sounds a bit cheap and tinny. The sound here is quite lush.

The incorporation of thematic motifs from My Dying Bride’s musical history is generally done quite tastefully. Yes, I agree that there probably should have been a few more clear links with the past albums, and there’s probably too much ambient rather than melodic inclusions of the wonderful songs ripe for the picking. Yet there is quite a bit of ‘Like Gods of the Sun’ worked in through these tracks, which pleases me greatly, especially the very effective version of ‘For My Fallen Angel’ that can be found in ‘Vainte Triomphante’ and ‘A Kiss to Remember’ in the opening song ‘In Your Dark Pavilion’. The surprises that appear throughout ‘Evinta’ are part of its allure. Maudling again deserves praise for the huge enterprise that this must have been, not to mention the vast amount of additional composition that has gone into the project.

Aaron’s spoken voice sounds great too. Yes, it’s grandiose in its solemnity, and is cheesy enough to go well with crackers, but gosh it's a good speaking voice. The poetry that he’s composed for the album is certainly overwrought, but I like this about the album and it largely fits. I’ve criticised the song titles on ‘Feel the Misery’ for being a bit random, yet here I think that the esoteric nature of the titles works quite well, as the whole project is such a side-step to an almost dreamlike and phantasmagoric world. It all belongs to the distant past somehow.

Of course, this is not a release that is ever going to be played in many contexts, but I believe it serves its purpose quite well on a quiet lonely evening. It’s a pity that it hasn’t been embraced more by fans – myself included initially. In fact, a perverse part of me wishes that this was the follow-up to ’34.788%... Complete’ and functioned as the very final MDB release. What an amazing epitaph that would have been, rather than the pretty good but hit-and-miss MDB albums of the 21st century. Obviously history turned out differently and that’s perhaps for the best.

Overall, this is a beautiful and sometimes moving collection of ambient sounds and moods that explore My Dying Bride’s back catalogue, and while it’s certainly not for regular rotation, and probably a good 15 minutes too long, I’m finding it more and more effective as I grow older. Try it again in the right context.

Evinta was a good idea. As a band which has always dallied with classical music through their revolutionary use of violin, heavy incorporation of keyboards into their doom metal, and broad-minded compositional methods, it made sense to eventually make an entire album of the stuff. Having Aaron Stainthorpe reciting more of his gloomy poetry was also a good idea, since he’s written some great lyrics over My Dying Bride’s career, though not always had space to include the symbolist imagery he opts for here. Finally, making a full album of more relaxed and mood-oriented music should also have been a definite positive for the ensemble, seeing as they have shown excellent control of mood and focus on emotion on most of their work. However, all those good ideas assembled into Evinta, creating the mother of bad albums.

I like My Dying Bride, I really do, but I just wish they would learn to curb a tendency for empty sentiment at the pretense of emotional intensity. I hate to be that guy, yet here we go: look at the song titles. ‘Of Lilies Bent with Tears’, ‘Of Sorry Eyes in March’, ‘In Your Dark Pavilion’: what do they mean? What are they meant to express? It feels like the same out-of-context nonsense that we got on Like Gods of the Sun, when every song ended up being about “a dark beauty” who either died or killed Stainthorpe in the lyrics. The first verse on the first song here drips out with all that pretense of deep meaning: “All great children / Build altars / I have no love / To give you.” Ultimately, it just highlights how the first two and last two lines have no connection, while the lifeless delivery adds nothing to the listening experience. What goes horribly wrong for Evinta though, comes down to the fact that the music offers nothing to back up the narration and occasional singing. Usually, when the themes were turning insufferable, something was going on musically to make it seem dramatic and to vindicate the notion that “dark beauty” was more than just a random crush. Key word: My Dying Bride have always been known for producing dramatic music.

Hence the awful oversight of Evinta was to remove almost all of the drama and the musical motive to write these poems of darkness and beauty. A classical album based on some themes from past Bride work (as Evinta was described) should have been a doddle: the band produced plenty of memorable violin and keyboard parts over their first 20 years, so knitting them together into fitting songs need only have required some bridging parts and – I’ll grant this – new lyrics to fit the new compositions. True enough, I can pick out some parts that I recognize in some songs, but the devastating decision was made not to rewrite these as full-blooded orchestral parts but as essentially classical ambient material. The whole album – 87 minutes on the standard edition and 129 minutes on the limited edition – packs zero crescendos, zero contrasts, and zero surprises once you’ve got used to the style. Most of the familiar parts are picked out by one hand on piano, accompanied by vague backing that merely covers up the silence, then tend to disappear extremely quickly to be replaced by the most banal sounds imaginable. The whole thing is basically a massive interlude. I was bored before the first song had finished.

If I need to explain why that makes such a horrible My Dying Bride album, I will do so briefly. Despite the titillating promise that fans would hear passages from classic songs, the measly attempts to shovel a few old melodies into these bloated compositions tell the whole story of indulgence and laziness, since Stainthorpe and guest keyboardist Jonny Maudling never bothered to adapt them to the correct instrument (why not use the violin more, considering its important position in Bride’s work) or actually form a part of a song around them, except on a couple of scanty occasions. Most obvious may be the introduction to ‘Your River’ redone for piano, keeping its key chord change, and seeing Stainthorpe sing some (dire) new lyrics over it. ‘Vanité Triomphante’ represents the only flicker of hope for me, hearing the guitar melody of ‘Turn Loose the Swans’ accompanied by the original violin and an operatic vocal performance of an original verse from guest singer Lucie Roche. The same 12 minute track also gets a chance to exhibit the swooning violin melody from ‘The Sexuality of Bereavement’, which might be my preferred Bride song; the way that gets played through about twice around the 10 minute mark and then thrown away without a second thought just goes to show how badly this was fucked up, since I would have been happy just to listen to that on repeat for the whole track.

The end result of Evinta may get a pass from some fans of sparse ambient music, mostly those who were not actually hoping to hear any of My Dying Bride’s work on the release. I suppose this would also be quite playable at a massage parlour or in the waiting room of a dentist’s clinic, though I highly doubt that was the target audience. For the most part, the 9 endless songs on Evinta prove an interminable waste of time waiting for something to happen that reflects either My Dying Bride’s history or their skill as songwriters. Judging from the lack of other members involved in the recording, I think we can probably blame Stainthorpe for the majority of the terrible execution. As an atheist, I don’t have many qualms about going to Hell, though if I find that I was wrong, I expect this will be playing when I arrive. Because, you know, it’s said that punishment will be everlasting.

Eventually most bands reach a point in their career when they can take some liberties or try something off-the-wall in the knowledge that if they've been around long enough, and their fans are loyal enough, they don't have much to lose. My Dying Bride originally conceived the idea of a symphonic album about fifteen years ago and considering where they were then it would most likely have been anathema to them. With so many more years now behind them, and established as they are in the metal world, Evinta has now surfaced not simply as a symphonic album but one that is, by all accounts, a reinterpretation of many of their better known songs.

And that's the problem. I know My Dying Bride's material pretty well, but apart from the opening minute or so of "Of Lillies Bent With Tears" that is quite obviously a riff on "Your River", most of the other tracks hardly jump out and introduce themselves. In fact, you would probably need to be someone who listens to MDB every day to pick up the subtle references, and if that's you I'm surprised you're alive. A bigger issue, however, is the lack of any drama. This is a band that has created some of the most over-the-top melodramatic music in the metal arena, but apart from about the first half of "In Your Dark Pavilion", this is mostly pretty unspectacular. Aaron Stainthorpe, of course, is the exception. His dark, brooding narration oozes with the murderous import of My Dying Bride's early history as he recounts new tales of morbid horror like "Of Sorry Eyes in March":

Flies lie dying
On your sorry lips
And on young love's
Broken wings
And the stone
That lets you drown
You are not worth
Stopping for

If only the music held the same menace. For essentially this isn't, really, My Dying Bride at all, but Stainthorpe and an opera singer accompanied by Johnny Maudlin's symphonic score and some strings. Granted, that could have worked, because film soundtracks and classical compositions are the most dramatic and emotional music of all, but on Evinta any level of forboding and malice is virtually absent. This is more like the ambient background music someone would play in an artspace at an exhibition, though Stainthorpe's measured, deep voice reciting poetry about killing people would certainly raise eyebrows if someone actually did so.

Sadly, while the concept is admirable, the execution is lacklustre, and with three discs averaging forty minutes each, it's a long haul for even the most dedicated fan. The booklet that comes with the packaging has a great album-by-album overview of their career and photos from every era including an amusing one of them all throwing the claw on a wooded hillside, but Evinta itself is a complete disappointment. It just doesn't work, and that's a shame.

Originally written for www.loudmag.com.au

I'm going to be honest with you; I haven't bought a My Dying Bride album in 8 years, and I never had that many of their albums to begin with. They were one of the first metal bands I discovered, but I guess I just got bored with their sound and started getting into other things. But when I heard about this, it intrigued me. I listened to some of their samples and went for it. I guess I just like radical departures from bands sometimes, even if many others don't. It also has sparked my interest in the band again, and I am certainly going to go back through their catalog and catch up on some of the better albums I've missed.

Yes, this album is perhaps on the opposite side of the metal spectrum. There isn't really a hint of metal here at all, but this album perhaps showcases their darkwave/gothic themes with a neoclassical twist. There is heavy keyboard, piano, and violin use, along with spoken word and some opera vocals. The music is very sparse - perhaps a bit too sparse at times, without kicking up much of an atmosphere. In fact, several parts of it are just downright boring. There are many sections of this album that I really enjoy, especially the gentle, trickling piano melodies heard throughout, but all of them seem to be tied together so loosely and indolently that it doesn't really form anything solid. Maybe it's because all the parts are derived from past songs, jumbled up and regurgitated into new compositions. Maybe totally new material would have been more complete sounding, who knows, but that wouldn't have been very fitting for a special 20th anniversary of the band.

Obviously, this album is extremely long - the triple album is over two hours (even though it could have fit on 2 discs... hmm). Still, it's certainly one of the longest albums I own, and the sparseness makes it seem much, much longer than that. Listening to the whole thing at once almost requires some sort of mental preparation and special attention if you expect to get anything out of it. Keep in mind that disc 3 does not come with all versions - might have to buy the one that says "box set."

My biggest complaint is the vocals. I'm not a huge fan of the opera vocals, and I'm not a huge fan of the spoken word thing either. It's OK, but it seems to break the ambiance too much, even though the ambiance is usually pretty boring. Sometimes the music almost halts completely to showcase some of these vocals. While the opera singer is definitely talented in her respective field, I'm not sure those kind of vocals really belong here too much. Maybe a few here and there would have been nice, but they are pretty much in the spotlight. Also, Aaron's "spoken word" is something he has done on many MDB albums, but it just seems to fit with a metal atmosphere much better than this.

My favorite track is probably "The Distance, Busy with Shadows," which features a gorgeous piano melody dancing quaintly with several different synth melodies, the track constantly swirling and transforming with a simple elegance to it. Sounds like it could almost be a ballet score. The best part is there are barely any vocals; in fact, I wish there were none at all. Another favorite is the second half of "And Then You Go," consisting of eerily gorgeous keyboard harmonies with some feathery opera vocals that I actually enjoy, creating some of the most layered and soothing parts of the album. The atmosphere here continues into the next track, "A Hand of Awful Rewards," which is perhaps the most ambient and minimal tracks here. The third disc has a bit more variety, "The Burning Coast of Regnum Italicum" being another one of my favorites, going through many different movements, including tender piano melodies, ambient keyboard harmonies, and even sounds of a thunderstorm.

Even though I see the many flaws in this album, it is something I keep going back to, which tells me it's either growing on me or certain parts are just strangely addicting. The whole album is still very intriguing to me, probably because it's just so different from anything I own. I kind of wish I could give it a better score, and maybe if all the best parts of this album were smashed down into one hour, I would, but in its current state, this is the best I can do.

British doom legends My Dying Bride have never been a band shy in expressing their emotive sides given their two-decade long existence in doing just that, but this "Evinta" release, which actually came out back in May, might just reveal how emotionally fragile the pioneers work has been. That very factor, however, is liable to create problems for a lengthy album release like this, where many of the band's past works have been reconstructed in a simple, classically-influenced acoustic affair, based around the somber vocals of Aaron Stainthorpe, hired French opera vocalist Lucie Roche, keys and classical strings. My edition consists of just 9 songs in 87 minutes over 2 discs - get yourself the full whack and enjoy a third disc with another 5 songs totalling 42 minutes - and has been a very difficult listen on every attempted occasion these recent weeks.

As anyone who's ever read my reviews of doom metal releases in particular will know I can take long, slow, drawn-out albums the musical equivalent of a cricket test match without any hint of boredom, and which combined with my great passion for certain niches of the classical music pantheon should render I a divine target for "Evinta", but the overall emptiness which fills so much of this record and the lack of emotional heaviness of typical MDB work leaves the feeling this is an interesting experiment which does not come off. Had a track like "Of Sorry Eyes In March" as found here been in the midst of a doomier MDB album it could have been a tranquil division between monoliths of true weeping solitude, but like "Of Lilies Bent With Tears", "That Dress and Summer Skin" and so much else on repeated listen it has gotten boring and flatly uninteresting. The classical strings, which seem few and far between when one really craves them, add a small impetus but with so little of the mass keyboard (sounding church organ-like very often) presence pushing my metaphorical buttons it can hardly even claim to hone the oppressive organ sounds of Abandon's "The Dead End", an album possessing the kind of incomprehensible despondency "Evinta" doesn't hold a solitary black candle to.

I've no doubt a small minority of MDB fans will take great pleasure in the reworking of a number of songs from one of doom metal's most pioneering bands but one gets the feeling even a classical, non-metal reinterpretation of their best songs could still have possessed more vigour and intrigue than this, which has unfortunately lost it's interest factor before the second disc even kicks in. Pity.

Originally written for www.Rockfreaks.net

For almost every decent band there's that album that most people view with a look of distaste. For Metallica, most would say it was their album "St. Anger." For Alcest it would most likely be "Cailles De Lune". For Amorphis it would have been the moment they stopped doing death metal that their releases lacked any substance. But as far as My Dying Bride goes, it's a bit unclear as to where they picked up, or where they let down. For those heavily into their earliest releases, "Towards The Sinister" and "As the Flower Withers," people would say "Turn Loose The Swans" was where MDB lost it. However, since MDB is best known for their gothic doom metal, let's say for now that was the album where they found their style and really launched off their career. That would lead us to say that "For Lies I Sire" was when they released a truly uninspiring release. The follow up to this being the "Bring Me Victory EP," which was the only song of any decency from the "For Lies I Sire" album, coupled with two covers, and a live song from their first ever demo. And then they gave us "Evinta."

This album had possibly one of the best beginnings I've heard for a very long time. Their song "In Your Dark Pavilion" was an incredibly haunting ten minute track. Launching off with some soft spoken word and elegant violins dancing around each other, female operatic vocals coming in and then fading out. Keys and synth working with each other to create some truly moving moments. Horns accentuated with percussion and organs, once again topped with more operatic sections and then piano coming on it's own before more strings and synth start filling out the background before moving on. All of this works within itself for a good first five minutes of the song. But the whole composition style suddenly changes once it hits the seven minute mark. It's like it stops trying to be a piece of oppression and suddenly becomes a lot more... free. Suddenly it's lighter with piano notes dancing all over the place, horns picking up the atmosphere among "high clouds" so to speak. As though a great big section of light has suddenly forced itself through dark and heavy overcast skies. The song starts picking up, building up, working itself to a very tasteful and incredible crescendo. But even still, it takes it's time to get there. Not forcing you to suddenly face it without some internal preparation. In come Aaron's vocals just when appropriate, saying exactly what needs to be said before suddenly... the song gently drifts itself to an end. After hearing this song... I gleefully anticipated the rest of the album, expecting great things. How wrong I was...

Track number two of disk one then came on. "You Are Not The One Who Loves Me." It started off with potential. Some rather moody piano chords being struck down with a moodiness only the depressed seem to really notice. Violins following that for a short while. After that comes a small piano section. Slightly flavourless, and not terribly inspired to any degree. Aaron starts some rather vague and meaningless vocals that don't really seem to follow any particular direction, story or anything really. The violin comes back, following the same tune it was doing before. Once that finished we get some truly second rate digitally created ambiance. To complete this particularly lifeless song Aaron decided to put in some more uninspiring lyrics not worth paying attention to. Not only are the lyrics rather bland, they don't even fit the particular song. This was to set the bench mark for the rest of the entire album.

Yes, this album does have some sections where the mood captures you and carries you to places of complete melancholic beauty. It does have sections where everything was composed perfectly. And everything holds it's own jewel of elegance. The real letdown is that almost all of those sections are held together by incredibly mediocre and forced sections of hollow sounding emptiness. Songs with irritating out of place harpsichord, horrible lyrics and badly created digital placements.

You hear a lot of influence from other well created neo-classical masterpieces. "Of Lillies Bent With Tears" has a strong resemblance to Ulver's "A Quick Fix of Melancholy," "In Your Dark Pavilion" has strong Dargaard elements to it. However, that doesn't necessarily work in this releases favour. Regardless of the fact that My Dying Bride re-used a lot of their famous riffs from earlier, popular songs in this three (or two disk if you didn't get your hands on the "deluxe" edition) disk abomination, it doesn't have it's own personality to the release. And by that I mean that this release has been so stretched by outside influences and tedious inserts that it doesn't have it's own soul. It's just a smattering of this and a splattering of that.

At this point, I'm just going to go right ahead and say it. My Dying Bride have finally lost it. And if the next release they have to give us is as mediocre as the compositions they've had to give us in the past three years, then it's pretty obvious they've given up the throne of UK gothic doom and it might just be time for an artist like My Silent Wake to come and hold the torch for the next few years to come.

These days there are a lot of ways to offer up some kind of fan gift of your previous works, starting from simple compilations to rerecordings, bands have moved on and given us remixes, rewrites and all sorts of things. With that said simply rewriting songs into orchestral versions would still be pretty unique, but My Dying Bride have gone even further than that. Not content with merely translating their old songs into orchestral versions the band have created entirely new compositions, scattered with familiar sounding melodies and tunes but never being a mere "violin cover" of anything. This idea is as bold as it is unique, but sadly not as successful as it should have been. In fact the only other example I think of a band doing a similar project, Drudkh's Songs of Grief and Solitude also failed to live up to hopes too. I can be more forgiving of this band than the Ukrainian black metal legends because the scope is much greater, sure Drudkh had unique acoustic compositions built around a bunch of melodies from their metal efforts, but this is considerably deeper and more thorough in that it’s a complete deconstruction of everything these songs were, to turn them into something new. This is truly an effort to be respected and admired, but sadly it's just not as entertaining as it should be.

So what exactly have My Dying Bride done that is so much more than "Replace guitars with violin, add extra layer of piano"? There's actually a lot more than you would expect, these songs do not move at the usual Bride pace or have any familiar aspects, instead Evinta takes everything in a surprisingly minimalist direction. This change is actually where the album fails for me; it lacks drama. The band are an exceedingly melodramatic and overwrought band for most of their material, while this does leave them in a position where songs can get cheesy and even embarrassing it does let the band create brilliance at times, so it's a necessary evil. This music lacks any kind of drama or potency to it; it ranges from pretty and unobtrusive to flat out bland and ambient in design, there is nothing to drive emotion. It's like they were worried for being seen as making movie soundtrack music so avoided anything with any kind of oomph that could be seen as resembling that type of style.

The other notable sounds of the album are of course the vocals, which involve Aaron's deep narration (And the odd sung line) and a genuine opera singer. Not like your usual goth metal operatic style; this is a genuine fat lady singing out on the stage type stuff. She's obviously classically trained and a professional so people into that sort of thing would find themselves in heaven, I personally can't stand the stuff, so the fact I count her as a negative is purely a matter of taste. Stainthorpe's narration is solid, he has a very theatrical deep voice which interplays with Lucie Roche's huge voice quite nicely. His lyrics are typically pretty good, he delivers enough of the sinister sounding stuff ("And the stone, That lets you drown, You are not worth stopping for") to get a pass from me, despite a few horrible wanky lyrics about lost love and whatnot with "That Dress and Summer Skin" being the biggest offender.

Each disc seems to have a clear direction, the first disk is more active, more overt in it's references to previous albums, yet still a very laid back and drama free effort, while disk two almost lays down into pure ambience, with most sections being padded thoroughly with soothing keyboard drones. There are fuller pieces of music, but they are few and far between. Disk 3 is more active again, and in fact attempts to bring in some of the melodrama I mentioned earlier with a more bombastic sound, but it seems to be too little too late. The disk one sound is actually quite bearable, it doesn't take you anywhere but the overall reliance on fully violin and piano driven songs does create some of the more outwardly beautiful moments and the bands lead melodies translate very well into the format. Three disks worth of it would be a bit tiresome so I understand the change in ideas, but it really is where most of the enjoyment is to be found. I do like the durations of each album in the set, the tedious nature of much of this is alleviated somewhat by the 45 minute run times of each disk.

The second CD is probably the weakest; it's got a lot more ambient soundscapes, so you get neither beauty nor the ability to hear that many old songs reborn in classical glory. It drags a lot and while there are more interesting parts on each song you usually have to sit through four minutes of lifeless keyboard nonsense to get there. Things pick up a little again on the third part of the release, it finally brings on some of that melodrama I was talking about earlier. Tunes attempt to be distressing instead of just pretty, there is more thunderous drum work and there is an increase of the more attention grabbing vocals. There are piano runs during the ambient bits and all sorts of little additions to make it deeper than just being a bleak tone. It actually does get a little cheesy and soundtrack-y at times, so I guess there's a reason for the avoidance of the more bombastic stuff, but it at least provides more thrills.

I really can't praise the band for the concept of Evinta enough. It's great to hear a long time band willing to step outside the bounds of what is normal, and not just rerecord a classic album, or make a little box set, or chuck a bunch of old songs and a few discarded demos on a disk and call it a compilation; this is project of epic scope and vision, just of exceedingly understated execution. As always execution will outweigh the concept, and that’s why I can't really praise this as something to actually listen to. I applaud the band for their efforts, but the actual music here doesn't conjure enough to really impress.