TOWARDS THE SINISTER

Before MY DYING BRIDE released their attention getting single "God Is Alone" which got them a ticket in the club of the "Peaceville Three" (meaning they got a contract with Peaceville Records at the same time as Anathema and Paradise Lost), they released this one demo TOWARDS THE SINISTER all the way back in 1990 after the two main founders Aaron Stainthorpe and Andrew Craighan found some buddies in their native Bradford, England music scene and churned out some of the very first examples of death / doom metal.

This short demo contains four tracks with "Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium" clocking in at 8 minutes and 33 seconds thus already displaying a healthy dose of sophistication and progressive outlook at the very earliest stages of the band's formation. While the production quality is quite horrible as the band used older analog equipment, the music is already quite developed and sounds very much like the the death / doom metal heard on the debut album "As The Flower Withers" with long well thought out compositions and developments.

Like the first two death / doom metal releases by the band, this demo Stainthorpe only uses death growls for vocals. The guitars range from the Sabbath / Pentagram old school doom metal riffs to more energetic old school thrash and death metal riffs. While they haven't added their signature violin melancholy quite yet, the keyboards that are present are already adding that sombre lugubrious effect as to give the music a very unique identity.

"Symphonie Infernus" was re-recorded and released on their first release as an EP while "Vast Choirs" would be re-recorded and appear on "As The Flower Withers." TOWARDS THE SINISTER is hardly essential even for diehard fans even though the other two tracks "The Grief Of Age" and "Catching Feathers" were never re-recorded and placed upon other albums because all of the tracks were included on the "Meisterwerk" compilations. This demo was only ever released as a cassette and sounds like crap in the production department but a fun little listen for history's sake and of course, excellent music that was already quite accomplished.