Abstract
The atmospheric heavy metal band My Dying Bride was formed in West Yorkshire in the summer of 1990. The various poetic personas that lyricist Aaron Stainthorpe adopts are similar to the tormented, neurotic, and obsessive narrators that define the poetry of Poe, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Coleridge, and others. A close analysis of My Dying Bride’s lyrics supported by interviews with Stainthorpe reveals how deeply the band is indebted to Romanticism in the band’s conceptualizations of femininity and exemplifies how earlier literary forms continue to influence contemporary culture. While the band’s lyrics resurrect several specifically nineteenth-century stereotypes regarding womanhood, this chapter argues that Stainthorpe’s lyrical approach is feminist, for most of his personas misunderstand female power and suffer as a result of their limited or misguided perspectives.
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Notes
- 1.
See Valdine Clemens’s influential psychoanalytic study of Gothic fiction, The Return of the Repressed (New York: State U of New York Press, 1999).
- 2.
For this essay, I am using the terms “Romantic” and “Romanticism” to signify the literary and cultural movements that flourished throughout early nineteenth-century Europe and America. However, I am particularly concerned with the darker side of Romantic poetry and fiction—what has more commonly been referred to as Gothic literature. My understanding of these frequently overlapping traditions has been chiefly informed by Michael Gamer’s Romanticism and the Gothic (2000). Gamer defines the Gothic in part as “an aesthetic” with the “ability to transplant itself across forms and media” helps to account for the proliferation of the Gothic throughout a variety of media, including music and musical subcultures (4).
- 3.
Although the band Paradise Lost borrowed its name from John Milton’s epic poem, his famous poem is not alluded to or directly adapted in any of the band’s lyrics.
- 4.
For example, see Rutherford (1994). The “Shakespearean” influence is particularly noticeable on the band’s first two albums and early EPs.
- 5.
My Dying Bride, “Sear Me MXMCIII,” in Turn Loose the Swans, Peaceville Records VILE 39CD, 1993, compact disc.
- 6.
My Dying Bride, “The Return of the Beautiful,” in My Dying Bride, As the Flower Withers, Peaceville Records VILE 32, 1992, compact disc.
- 7.
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979), 17.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition,” in The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, ed. David Galloway (New York: Penguin, 2003), 436.
- 11.
In my interview with Stainthorpe, the vocalist confirmed that he has never read “The Philosophy of Composition,” but was intrigued by the parallels I brought to his attention. In an earlier interview from 2009, Stainthorpe admitted that he “purposely avoided [reading] people like Poe” because he feared that it would have a negative and limiting impact on his own lyrical style (Cartea de Nisip).
- 12.
The phrase “my dying bride” first occurs in the song “The Return of the Beautiful,” which appears on the band’s debut album As the Flower Withers: “Look for me among the flowers / sleeping with the earth / My dying bride.”
- 13.
Jerry Rutherford , “My Dying Bride” in RIP Photo Special Presents: Death Lives (1994), 17.
- 14.
Duncan Glenday, “Some Words of Light From My Dying Bride,” Sea Of Tranquility, last modified April 23, 2004, www.seaoftranquility.org/article.php?sid=161&mode=thread&order=0.
- 15.
Dave Rebel , “My Dying Bride,” Only Angels Have Wings, last modified April 15, 2004, http://onlyangels.free.fr/interviews/m/my_dying_bride.htm.
- 16.
Aaron Stainthorpe , e-mail interview with author, August 16, 2016.
- 17.
My Dying Bride, “For My Fallen Angel,” in Like Gods of the Sun, Peaceville Records CDVILE 65, 1996.
- 18.
William Wordsworth, The Prelude, in Wordsworth: Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, rev. Ernest de Selincourt (New York: Oxford UP, 1971), XII. 215, 218.
- 19.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples,” in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat (New York: Norton, 2002), lns. 135–36.
- 20.
“Love’s golden arrow / At him should have fled / And not Death’s ebon dart / To strike him dead.” William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Ann Arbor, MI: Borders Press, 1997), lns. 947–48.
- 21.
Poe, “Annabel Lee, ” in The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, lns. 21–22.
- 22.
My Dying Bride, “The Light at the End of the World,” in The Light at the End of the World, Peaceville Records CDVILE 79, 1999, compact disc.
- 23.
Whether a deliberate acknowledgement of Coleridge’s influence, a subconscious slip, or a mere coincidence, one of these apocryphal passages describes the lighthouse keeper’s encounter with a familiar bird: “one day, up high on a rock, a bird did perch and cry. / An albatross, he shot a glance, and wondered deeply, why?”
- 24.
My Dying Bride, “Your River,” in Turn Loose the Swans.
- 25.
My Dying Bride, “The Night He Died,” in The Light at the End of the World.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
The three versions of “Sear Me” are linked by the reprisal of two prominent melodies. The first version from As the Flower Withers (1992) and the third version from The Light at the End of The World (1999) are performed by the entire band. The second version from Turn Loose the Swans (1993) is comprised of only violin and piano.
- 29.
My Dying Bride, “Sear Me,” in As The Flower Withers.
- 30.
The Latin words and phrases are translated on the band’s website. “As The Flower Withers,” My Dying Bride, www.mydyingbride.net/my-dying-bride-lyrics/item/as-the-flower-wither. Accessed January 12, 2017.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
J. Gerald Kennedy , “Poe, ‘Ligeia,’ and the Problem of Dying Women,” in New Essays on Poe’s Major Tales, ed. Kenneth Silverman (New York: Cambridge UP, 1993), 113–29.
- 35.
Stainthorpe, “Interview.”
- 36.
Another interesting difference worth noting between Poe’s works and Stainthorpe’s lyrics is that Poe consistently provides names for the female subjects of his texts. Even though the focus is on the first-person male narrator, the male characters are not named. Stainthorpe rarely provides proper names for any of the characters in his songs, regardless of gender. The only exception is the song “Catherine Blake,” which is about one particular woman’s “small part in a massive war between good and evil” (Rebel) . The fact that she shares a name with the wife of poet William Blake is purely coincidental. In a 2004 interview for the Metal Rules online magazine, Stainthorpe explains, “I never even thought about the William Blake link until it had been recorded and Mags [the band’s sound engineer] … asked if there was a connection. It never clicked when I was writing it, but I knew that I was bound to be asked that question in the future. It’s a nice association and I don’t really mind it.” See “Heart of Steel: Interviews,” Metal-Rules, last modified May 2004, www.metal-rules.com/interviews/MDB-May2004.htm.
- 37.
Poe, “The Raven, ” The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, 29–33.
- 38.
Poe, “Annabel Lee,” The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, 42–43.
- 39.
Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford UP, 1986), 50.
- 40.
Gilbert and Gubar, Madwoman in the Attic, 25.
- 41.
Christina Rossetti , “In an Artist’s Studio,” in The Complete Poems, ed. R.W. Crump and Betsy S. Flowers (New York: Penguin, 2001), ln. 14.
- 42.
Poe, “The Oval Portrait,” The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, 201–4.
- 43.
Images of dead or dying women appear in the lyrics of several other gothic metal bands. Noteworthy examples from the perspective of grieving male speakers include Anathema’s “Under A Veil (Of Black Lace)” (1993), Type O Negative’s “Bloody Kisses” (1993), Novembers Doom’s “A Dirge of Sorrow” (1995), and Katatonia’s “12” (1996). The song “Alone” (2000) by the female-fronted American band Rain Fell Within, however, turns the tables and is sung from the perspective of a widow grieving the loss of her husband. The 3rd & The Mortal’s “Death Hymn” (1994) and The Gathering’s “Sand & Mercury” (1995) are two additional examples of songs with female vocalists that sing about dead or dying loved ones.
- 44.
Barbara Fass, La Belle Dame sans Merci and the Aesthetics of Romanticism (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1974), 17.
- 45.
Many other gothic metal bands have written songs that feature femmes fatales and are deeply indebted to nineteenth-century literary traditions. For example, Type O Negative’s “Haunted” (1996) and “Dissonance” by the Norwegian band Black Lodge.
- 46.
My Dying Bride, “The Blue Lotus,” in Songs of Darkness, Words of Light, Peaceville Records CDVILEF 110, 2004, compact disc.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Bram Stoker , Dracula (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1998).
- 49.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Nicholas Halmi, Paul Magnuson , and Raimonda Modiano (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004), lines 190–94.
- 50.
John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” in The Complete Poems, ed. John Barnard (New York: Penguin, 1988), lines 45–48.
- 51.
Fass, La Belle Dame sans Merci and the Aesthetics of Romanticism, 22.
- 52.
My Dying Bride, “The Prize of Beauty,” Songs of Darkness, Words of Light.
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” ln. 37.
- 55.
My Dying Bride, “The Prize of Beauty,” Songs of Darkness, Words of Light.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
Algernon Charles Swinburne , “Laus Veneris” in Poems & Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon, ed. Kenneth Haynes (New York: Penguin, 2000), lines 17–20.
- 58.
Other literary ancestors of Stainthorpe’s satanic femme fatale include Théophile Gautier’s Clarimonde in “La Morte Amoureuse” (1836), who convinces a priest to betray his vows, and Charles Baudelaire’s “Metamorphosis of a Vampire” (1857), whose fatal woman renders “angels impotent” before they “damn themselves” for her.
- 59.
Ibid.
- 60.
Swinburne , “Laus Veneris,” lines 22–24.
- 61.
Fass, La Belle Dame sans Merci and the Aesthetics of Romanticism, 22.
- 62.
Barbara Warren , The Feminine Image in Literature (Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden Book Co., 1973), 8, 10, quoted in Joseph Andriano , Our Ladies of Darkness: Female Daemonology in Male Gothic Fiction (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1993), 2.
- 63.
Joseph Andriano , Our Ladies of Darkness: Female Daemonology in Male Gothic Fiction (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1993), 2.
- 64.
Ibid., 84.
- 65.
Joan Dayan , “Poe’s Women: A Feminist Poe?” Poe Studies 26 (1993): 5.
- 66.
Ibid., 1.
- 67.
Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings.
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Heilman, M.J. (2018). “The female is such exquisite hell”: The Romantic Agony of My Dying Bride. In: Rovira, J. (eds) Rock and Romanticism. Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72688-5_12
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