My Dying Bride interview met Andrew Craighan (guitars)
Andrew Craighan: “No one says ‘lead guitar’ in My Dying Bride. Neither me nor Neil is lead guitarist, but I do like harmonies, so we put those in. Long ago Gene Simmons once said something along the lines of “no one walks around whistling Yngwie Malmsteen’s solos”. I thought: they are pretty special, but he might be right. We have harmonies that people can remember and whistle or sing. That might stick by them.”
My Dying Bride is een instituut op het vlak van doom/death metal. In de jaren negentig schreven ze geschiedenis door een nieuwe kruisbestuiving in metal te lanceren die uniek en nooit eerder gedaan was. Anno 2024 zijn deze scheppers van ultraweemoedige tristesse terug met een nieuw album. Deze vijftiende schijf toont een geïnspireerde band die intense muziek creëert waardoor ‘A Mortal Binding’ (weer) terug te vinden zal zijn in jaarlijstjes op het einde van dit jaar. We hadden een diepgaand gesprek met de man die aan de wieg van vele klassiekers staat met zijn uitzonderlijk gitaarspel: Andrew ‘Andy’ Craighan.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 19 april 2024
How are you doing?
Very well, thank you.
A new record from My Dying Bride is always something to rejoice, at least for me…
I am glad it is done as well, for different reasons.
Why?
Well, it means it is finished and they take a long time to do and sometimes I am glad it is done. It has been a not necessarily tricky or challenging episode. It has been much easier than some of the albums we have done, but still it is nice to see it finished and it always is a relief. When you are writing and rehearsing and rehearsing, you don’t really know anymore where it is going. I mean, because we rehearse in the traditional style. We rehearse like it is a gig. We do demo tracks and things like that, but you cannot really tell where the album is going until the final mix and then the cover and titles. Only at that point you understand what you have created. Until that point it is still work in progress. I just feel relieved and glad it is done and ready to be released. I hope that people – at least My Dying Bride fans – will enjoy it.
It has been a while, because ‘The Ghost Of Orion’ came out in 2020. Next we had the pandemic of course. When did you actually come out again for playing gigs?
Well, that’s a good question. It must have been, I guess, when all the lockdowns stopped, because all the gigs, everything we had before lockdown time were rolled over each time we got more lockdowns. We kind of re-agreed the contracts and suddenly we were playing gigs that were – contractually – three years old. I don’t even remember where the first one was. It must have been in the Fall of 2022 or maybe in the Fall of 2021, I don’t really remember it. All these lockdown times are a bit of a blur, because every day became the same, because there was nothing to do. Time stood still and we did not do anything. During that time I thought we were in big trouble. Not as My Dying Bride, but about freedom and humanity itself. I thought we’d never get our freedom back. I did not really expect them to let go once they had us quiet in these lockdowns. Thankfully they did. So we did not start writing till the backend of October 2021. We really got confident and started writing again and then in 2022 we started proper rehearsals around June and then after these solid rehearsals we began writing these songs two or three weeks. Remember we have an EP as well with two different songs on. We wrote 13 songs during that process. So after this we have an EP to finish. We are still very busy. I am glad that the pandemic is behind us now, I hope it never comes back.
That is true, it was frightening at any level. You always gather ideas and riffs and solos, but when the actual writing process comes with the whole band, I think it must be very different…
It was on this one. Two reasons. One is obvious: during ‘The Ghost Of Orion’ we had some members leave and Aaron was just coming back from his daughter’s illness. He was really out of shape. I don’t think he was really ready for a new album, but we did it anyway and I think it shows on the vocals that he is not at his best. We tried to hide that in some respects, but people who know My Dying Bride could see that the vocals on that album were not as good as they could be, but on this album, we have a full band, no one was leaving or anything and the rehearsals have proofed to be very useful, because we got well-rehearsed and very solid to put together the songs and then when Aaron was coming to the recordings to sing on them, he did a staggering job. Freedom allowed us to write another album and the results are ace. And different. And also just having a full compartment of members that were into the music. Neil (Blanchett – second guitarist – Vera) has come on board now, he is very talented and he loves to do it. He is an old school My Dying Bride fan, so we don’t have to teach him the essence of the band. Lena and Shaun have been in the band for 15 or 16 years… we don’t have to teach them and then Dan (Mullins –Vera) back on drums. He has been in and out of the band for as long as I have been around and we don’t have to teach him anything. He knows everything about My Dying Bride. The actual rehearsals were great fun, because we got going and the recording was very easy, because we are all disciplined well rehearsed. We rehearsed hard.
It was the second time you recorded with Mark Mynett in Manchester as producer…
It was an easy decision to go back to Mark again. He is a musician’s producer, he knows what he is doing. We are at the same level. Sometimes he is talking to you and you have no real idea what this is all about, but you think ‘let us hope that the album sounds good when it is finished’ and it did. Sometimes it was long-winding and painful, but the results were worth it because he wants us to do this and that. I cannot complain. If someone gets the opportunity I would say: go record with Mark, he won’t let you down. Like the two songs that we released now on YouTube… YouTube has a limited bandwidth. It is not a stereo CD, but people say it sounds great. I think it does.
It seems that he is also a university lecturer?
Yes, he has a PHD in heavy metal. So he is a doctor of heavy metal. If you google it, you will find doctor Mark Mynett and his PHD is in heavy metal. Of all things. He had to get it to keep his job, so they created the spot and created the PHD.
When and how did you decide on the title ‘A Mortal Binding’?
I don’t know exactly, but it just showed up with me and Aaron and it stayed. I can understand what it means and it is just an umbrella for the songs and I think it reflects a little bit of sadness and a little bit of loss of what life really is. ‘A Mortal Binding’ is not as much of a metaphor, it kind of says what it says. We are very much fragile, we are just here for a while. It is reflective and encourages us to make the most of it. It suits the album. Lyric-wise it is softer than I expected, but music-wise it is quite harsh, but I think it works in the end.
What can you tell about ‘Thornwyck Hymn’ and ‘The 2nd Of Three Bells’, the two songs you have given free until now?
‘Thornwick Hymn’ is one of the older songs, it is one of those we have created and then tweaked with first. The reason it became the video, the first video, is when we had the album all lined up in the order that we liked, we knew this was coming. We knew that Nuclear Blast wanted two songs for YouTube and we could not decide. In fact we voted and we could not get a single or straight answer of anybody really. We had three options, which was a good sign, broadly it meant that the album was music-wise in balance. So we left that decision to Nuclear Blast. I kind of pushed for ‘The 2nd Of Three Bells’ because that is one of my favourite songs on the album. I just think it really suits. It is not trying to be anything, it is not overall glamorous, a funeral march and I just think it suits the tone of the album very well, but if I had really, really thought about it, I would have gone for ‘The Apocalyptist’, but that one is too long. The other ones are still seven minutes, but whatever… The first song ‘Thornwick Hymn’ is based on a folk tale from England on the rugged coastline in Yorkshire. The chill waters and hidden folks brought woe to anyone who came too close and it turned into a myth. The second one ‘The 2nd Of Three Bells’ is almost self-explaining. If anybody looks up what that means, it should not surprise anybody really.
Talking about the new second guitarist Neil Blanchett, I think he was already a longer time with you doing gigs, isn’t it?
He was, yeah. He came in just after ‘The Ghost Of Orion’ and then came the lockdown time, but we have been working – we knew him long before that as well. We know Neil since the band started. He had a band in a similar vein, called Garden Of Remembrance, when we were kids. My Dying Bride was doing ‘Turn Loose The Swans’ and they had their demos which was very similar to My Dying Bride’s music. So for him to come and joining us is not a real surprise. It is very much his department. So he is a good fit and he is a good guy.
I remember on the former album, there were two guest appearances. Are there guests on this album?
No. This was quite deliberated. If you listen to the album, you can probably detect that there are lots of riffs. We got lead guitars and big riffs, we wanted more punch, rather than long atmospheric passages. It was almost back to basics. We did not add any extra vocals or female vocals, we did not want any extra musicians, anything that wasn’t just ‘THE BAND’ is put aside for this one. I wanted less complexity. There is nothing wrong with what Jo Quail did on cello. In fact it is brilliant what she did, there is no question about that and the other instruments that we brought in and Lindy-Fay Hella on ‘The Solace’, a phenomenal piece of singing. We can never beat that. In respect of that we should not try. So we wanted to go for – as far as it goes for My Dying Bride – a straight forward heavy metal album and that is why it kind of sounds like it does.
For the artwork you engaged a guy who has been working with you for the previous EP ‘Macabre Cabaret’…
Yes. His name is Roberto Bordin. He is an Italian guy. He worked very hard. There’s so much metaphor and the album is so cryptic. All the cover artwork is so cryptic. He is going to produce like a full PDF explanation of why it looks like it does. We are working on it now. I have read it and it is fuckin’ big. I warn you, you’ll never think that these thoughts go through people’s heads when they are creating these things. But they do. One thing he said when we were emailing a couple of weeks ago regarding the artwork. He was – he did not listen to the album and he only has the early versions of the lyrics and the titles. He did not really have a full picture, but he said something to me that sticks with me. The world is – I know that it is better than it was during lockdown time – but it is so horrible now and everybody is so agitated, divided and against everything. He wanted to do a cover that was soothing and I never thought about that. Of all the things I thought about the artwork, soothing was never one of them. If you read his interpretations and explanations, you can see it differently. It kind of works. It did not work straight away. There was a big fallout when we first saw the artwork. The band did not like it and it had to be changed. Thankfully it was changed into something that the band more agreed with, let’s say. So it wasn’t all sweetness and lie. It was really quite bad, but it was fixed. The interpretation is basically an artist, it is almost like performance art in itself, using My Dying Bride’s titles as the subject. It is not our full interpretation this time. It is his.
Can you tell some more thoughts about your favourite song ‘The Apocalyptist’?
It was one of the easiest songs for us to create on this album. We like songs that are easy, they save us a lot of time. When we were writing this, we had no lyrics. We don’t have vocals, we just make the story… I intent to make stories of myself and then later on Aaron changes it. All the rehearsals, we don’t have vocals, so we just write what we think would make sense to us. To us, we are writing instrumental songs. In fact for 18 months, My Dying Bride is an instrumental band. We don’t hear vocals, we don’t see lyrics. We don’t get any of that. It only comes when recording and at that point it is too late to decide if it works or not. We just wrote a song that felt like that. We already had ‘The Apocalyptist’ as title and thankfully it stayed and we just wrote a song with that mood. If you imagine that you can see the end, apocalyptic in his visions, and maybe move through various elements and moves through his life, maybe even then to resignation… That was an interpretation when we were writing it. It moved around, based on a different set of lyrics than what we eventually ended upon it. We enjoy the song and the fact that it ebbs and floods. I particularly like the middle section. It just works. We don’t always get these longer songs to play like that, but this one does.
How do you divide the leads and the rhythm guitars?
They are just harmonies. We don’t, no one says ‘lead guitar’ in My Dying Bride. Neither me nor Neil is lead guitarist, but I do like harmonies, so we put those in. Neil doesn’t really like them, I don’t mind, so I try to do some but… for example, on ‘The 2nd Of Three Bells’, when the song starts you got a high harmony. That was originally Neil, but he just refused to play it. It is not really his cup of tea, so I am doing them, but it is not lead guitar in the traditional sense. It is based on a saying of Gene Simmons. He said something along the lines of “no one walks around whistling Yngwie Malmsteen’s solos”. I thought: they are pretty special, but he might be right. We have harmonies that people can remember and whistle or sing. That might stick by them. It is a long, long time ago that I thought about this and we understand how repetition works. Look at Nirvana who played one riff through the whole song and it is a classic… so we are not completely without song thinking why the songs are like that. The harmonies have that melancholy in it there. Many of the harmonies start as violin parts, sometimes we exchange it and Shaun has his own harmonies. We’ve got lots of harmonies now, everyone is doing it.
What happened to drummer Jeff Singer? Did he go back to being a session drummer only again?
Yes, I think he bid off more than he could chew and I mean that as a good thing. The time it needs to be in this band, he really has to give and it became pretty obviously: his life and his activities after work – because he works – and he lives very far. He lives in Manchester and we in Leeds. After work going to rehearsals was tough and he got to the point – we were rehearsing sometimes twice a week – and he could not make any of them. We did a couple of gigs and I think it was after one of the gigs he said: ‘Look, sorry guys, this is not working’ and we felt the same. We had another drummer even before Dan Mullins came back – a young guy named James Wiseman who’s a great drummer – and he was filling in for Dan while Dan was filling in for Jeff. At the beginning of this album we had three drummers at one point and only one who came (chuckles). Dan came back and his role became more permanent. It kept us going. We recorded a lot of the rehearsals and James is on some of them, so they might be spread to the wider world. We met Jeff in Germany recently and he was playing with the band Arð. A kind of doom metal band. I don’t know how you call it, it is not folk or doom, it is something different. It is not like My Dying Bride and they are pretty popular. I think they are on the Prophecy label. It was nice to run up to friends. In fact half of that band is also Winterfylleth. And on the Prophecy Fest that you were, we met Daniel (Dan Capp – Vera) from Winterfylleth who’s now in another black metal band. We are just wandering around Europe, meeting old friends (laughs). That is fun, but sadly for Jeff, he could not commit, so he just did the right thing.
I noticed that several festivals are planned for this Summer. I hope you look forward to that…
Yes we will be busy with that.
Is there a chance you come in the neighbourhood from Belgium or Holland?
I don’t know. Some of us have side projects now, that need to gig as well, so we have to be careful with the time. We will see. The side projects, I don’t really agree with them. It distracts people. They exist and people want to do them, so I cannot say anything about that. The My Dying Bride shows might take a step back for a little while when these side projects are concentrated on and then we’ll be moving on after that. I don’t really know. It is what it is. You cannot stop these people wanting to do this, so we make the best of it.
Is it a secret who’s doing the side project?
Yes. Not for very long anymore, but I can certainly say it is not me.
The making of the video clips was on location. Can you tell something about that?
Yes. The first one, which was ‘Thornwick Hymn’ was filmed in studios in London somewhere and the musical part of the band was not involved in that, just Aaron and all those models and that kind of things. It was a bit of a shame, because we really liked the idea of doing that. The second half of the video was filmed in Bradford at the studios where we rehearse. The video was a little bit more acting about the main feature, which was fine. I think it is a great looking video, it really is, but we thought we have balanced that out when we did ‘The 2nd Of Three Bells’. We used the same people, a guy called Daniel Waverley Gray and his team. They are young guys but they have some great ideas and equipment. The second video I know a bit more of, because I was more involved on the organization level. We recorded it in Manchester in a place called Antwerp Mansion. It is close to being a ruin, but they do gigs there or other performances. There is no safety, no control. We dressed the rooms in a different colour with a design which makes it interesting. On that one, we are more concentrated on the band, the musical aspect. Dan on drums, Lena on bass, Shaun on violin and Neil and myself on guitars, because we were not in the first video. A lot of people were complaining, in the band as well. They should be in the video, because they worked hard for this album and I completely agree with that. We fixed that, so we did a bright looking video where the band is playing. All the credits to Daniel and the guys. They did a great job, because the first video used most of the money, and the second video we have done with what was left. And I think we did really well. Just make it happen.
Are there plans for more videos?
I think there is one more, but the band will not be in it as far as I understand. It will be a lyric video or a feature video. That one is for ‘Her Dominion’, track number one and I have seen it, it is a good piece of art work By then we have some ‘behind the scenes’ footage from ‘The 2nd Of Three Bells’ which is based on the making of it and then the album comes out. At that point people can start complaining on the Internet (laughs).
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