PRESS RELEASE:
MY SILENT WAKE – LOST IN MEMORIES, LOST IN GRIEF
LABEL: ARDUA MUSIC
RELEASE DATE: MAY 3RD 2024
Even in the soft, surrounding darkness behind the walls of sleep, my memories consume me. A tableau of frozen moments, flickering images upon the lightless screen behind my eyes. Each one is perfect in its terrible, aching beauty; the pain honed again to a gleaming, cutting edge that the forgetful hours of daylight had just begun to dull. Here in dreams I break once more, but in that breaking I see past, precious days as new and I would not trade that bittersweet agony for a thousand years of peaceful, silent slumber…
It has been four years since My Silent Wake gifted us with a full length album, but with Lost In Memories, Lost In Grief, their twelfth such endeavour, they have offered up treasures enough for every day of those intervening years and many more to come. There is a sense of homecoming, of acquaintance renewed in the melancholy chord progressions that touch the heart with such honesty and openness, but there is also a fresh excitement to be found in vibrant songs like opener ‘The Liar And The Fool’. There is a new energy bubbling beneath the wistful guitar lines and the haunting atmosphere, a sense that My Silent Wake are exploring new territories and beginning new chapters in their storied career. In the past the band have walked two separate paths, their albums being either dark, towering edifices of powerful doom/death metal or more experimental creations – ambient, acoustic and touched by folklore and history. With Lost In Memories, Lost In Grief there seems to have been a magical blurring of boundaries between the two worlds, with ghosts slipping across the thresholds. While songs like ‘Wolf’, with its twisting guitar motifs, ‘The Last Lullaby’ – rife with the dark radiance and emotional power that characterises My Silent Wake’s music – and the staggering ‘No Time’, it’s notes held like dying breaths with time stretching out between them, are undeniably, magnificently heavy, they also possess an earthy majesty, a regal nature not bound to finery or fripperies but to the ancient spirit of the forest and the soil, a sense of history that links them to the fragile enchantments of albums like 2020s Damnum Per Saeculorum. With its telling keyboard presence, emotive vocals steeped in sorrow and tinged with desperation, windswept riffs and singing guitar melodies, Lost In Memories, Lost In Grief may well be the most vibrant, beautifully realised, complete My Silent Wake album to date.
Recorded, mixed and mastered predominately at Priory Recording Studios by Greg Chandler (Ungfell, Indesinence, Esoteric etc) with additional work being completed at Hollow Hearth by the band’s own Simon Bibby, Lost In Memories… is blessed with a sound rich in texture, that captures the palpable emotion and unquestionable integrity which shines from every note. In the track ‘The Liar And The Fool’ you will hear the words “I cannot see this ending well…escape while you can”, but when Ardua Music release Lost In Memories, Lost In Grief on May 3rd, adorned in the evocative artwork of Matthew Vickerstaff (Cradle Of Filth, My Dying Bride, Mayhem etc), you will never want to leave My Silent Wake’s kingdom of twilight shadows and star dusted skies.
Line-up:
Ian Arkley – Guitar/Ebow/Growled and semi spoken-word vox
Addam Westlake - Bass Guitar
Gareth Arlett – Drums
Simon Bibby – Yamaha Reface YC organ / Clean vox / Whispers
Genre: Epic/Doom Metal
For fans of: Paradise Lost | Novembers Doom | My Dying Bride | Atlantean Kodex
Further Information:
www.facebook.com/MySilentWake/