As the Flower Withers

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As the Flower Withers

Studio album by My Dying Bride
Released	May 2, 1992
Recorded	1991-1992
Genre	Doom metal
Length	49:26
Label	Peaceville Records
Producer(s)	My Dying Bride
All Music Guide link
My Dying Bride chronology
Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium (1992)	As the Flower Withers (1992)	The Thrash Of Naked Limbs (1993)

As the Flower Withers was the first album by Yorkshire-based doom metal band My Dying Bride.

Lyrically, Aaron Stainthorpe was at his most uncompromisingly elaborate. When he was not invoking Latin in asking his audiences to incinerate an unnamed ‘her’ (‘Sear Me’), he was staging an epic battle between God and nature (‘The Return Of The Beautiful’). Lines such as "Stricken I’d raise my dripping limbs" and "Bare witness to this orgy of glory" are typical of the poetic extravagances that Stainthorpe employed on this debut full length.

As far as it is possible to generalise, most of the music on As the Flower Withers stretched traditional Death metal almost to its limits. There are long, drawn-out passages, and these provided a counterpoint to the time-honoured galloping detuned guitar that followed. Stainthorpe’s vocals are all growls and grunts, but they are occasionally underscored by violin and keyboard sections – as in 'The Bitterness And The Bereavement' and 'The Return of the Beautiful'.

As the Flower Withers was one of the albums that launched the doom death metal hybrid in the underground metal scene, and gave a taste of the gloomy depths that would be plumbed on albums such as 1995's The Angel and the Dark River. Contemporaries such as Paradise Lost and Anathema would also contribute to the rise of the doom death metal genre.