''The Ghost of Orion'' is the thirteenth studio album by British
heavy metal band
My Dying Bride. It was released on 6 March 2020 through
Nuclear Blast
Nuclear Blast is a record label and mail order record distributor with subsidiaries in Germany, the United States and Brazil. The label was founded in 1987 by Markus Staiger in Germany. Originally releasing hardcore punk records, the label mov ...
.
Background
The album is the band's first with new member
Jeff Singer, replacing
Shaun Taylor-Steels
Shaun 'Winter' Taylor-Steels (born Shaun Steels, 22 August 1970) is a British heavy metal drummer and bassist. Steels, born in Normanton, West Yorkshire, is of Scottish and Norwegian descent on his mother's side of the family.
Steels replaced ...
who departed due to "unresolvable drumming issues". Aaron Stainthorpe's five-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer a couple years after the release of the band's previous album ''
Feel the Misery'', from which she was later declared in remission.
Mark Mynett is the producer and studio engineer for the album and Jo Quail performs cello on some songs.
The album's first single, "Your Broken Shore", was released on 20 January,
followed by a second single, "Tired of Tears", on 7 February.
Reception
''The Ghost of Orion'' received generally positive reviews. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 81, based on four reviews.
Thom Jurek of
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
wrote a positive review, remarking that "''The Ghost of Orion'' was born in the aftermath of strife, strain, and fear; but these are balanced by gratitude, endurance, and even benevolence; the conflicting tensions exist with no attempt to alleviate them, and all of these qualities are among the many reasons My Dying Bride has, for more than three decades, reigned at the pinnacle of doom metal."
''New Noise Magazine'', in an article detailing an interview with Stainthorpe, described him as having "one of his most impressive vocal performances to date".
Track listing
Personnel
*
Aaron Stainthorpe
Aaron Stainthorpe (born 12 November 1968) is an English singer who is the lead vocalist for doom metal band My Dying Bride.
In December 2005, it was announced that Stainthorpe would lend his voice and some lyrics to a song with Sarah Jezebel D ...
– vocals
*
Andrew Craighan – all guitars
*Lena Abé – bass guitar
*
Shaun Macgowan
Shaun MacGowan (born May 13 1988) is a UK-born violinist, keyboardist and guitarist, best known as the keyboardist and violinist of British doom metal band My Dying Bride. He replaced Katie Stone in 2009, and joined the band to tour the album ' ...
– keyboards, violins
*
Jeff Singer – drums, percussion
Additional personnel
*Jo Quail – cello
*
Lindy-Fay Hella
Lindy-Fay Hella (born in 1975) is a Norwegian singer, musician and composer, known as a member of Wardruna and Lindy-Fay Hella & Dei Farne. She played electronic music before becoming a founding member of Wardruna, which plays eclectic music influ ...
– vocals on "The Solace"
Charts
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ghost of Orion
2020 albums
My Dying Bride albums
Nuclear Blast albums