{"id":5676,"date":"2020-12-08T02:12:38","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T02:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavensmetalmagazine.com\/?p=5676"},"modified":"2020-12-17T01:40:42","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T01:40:42","slug":"bride-here-is-your-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/heavensmetalmagazine.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/08\/bride-here-is-your-god\/","title":{"rendered":"BRIDE: Here is Your God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u2026and here is your Bride<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the most intriguing \u2013 and for some fans also the most perplexing \u2013 quality Bride possesses is the ever-changing nature of their musical output. Every album over the past 34 years has its own distinctive and defining style and presentation. Add an ever-changing line-up of supporting musicians over those years, contributing further to the diversity of sounds, and you have a long and storied career of musical exploration. But at the core of Bride remains Dale and Troy Thompson. While you may or may not love them all (I\u2019m counting 16 full albums, including this one), they are cemented and connected musically by Troy\u2019s creative and groove-infected guitar tones and Dale\u2019s clever and confrontational vocal outpourings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, despite the musical experimentation, which has, for the most part, been more successful and impactful than not, the message has remained clear \u2013 Jesus Christ is, always has been, and remains the hope for mankind. Yes, I know there is more to it than that, but for sake of brevity, long time fans know what I am saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not unreasonable to surmise that, at this point in their career, Bride defy comparison. Furthermore, there is probably little that I could convey to readers that would either convince someone to embrace this music or, on the other hand, reject the listen. As my title implies \u2013 \u201cHere is Your Bride.\u201d If you have loved most of their 34 years of hard rock and metal, there is nothing here that should be overlooked as this is essentially an amalgamation of everything that we\u2019ve heard from them (old and new) up to this point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it is simultaneously comical and refreshing that each Bride album has the \u201csounds-like\u201d pre-release hype. It is comical because this hype, from my perspective, never reflects the actual music \u2026 and it is refreshing because credit Bride for still being able to garner the kind-of pre-release hype that is both controversial and intriguing \u2013 a quality usually reserved for younger bands at the peak of their career. So it\u2019s cool that 34 years into their career, people still look forward to what kind of album musically they are going to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the continuum of the Bride musical universe, Here is Your God<\/em> would fairly occupy a space on the heavier end of the spectrum, but not necessarily the heaviest. Much of the music feels heavier than Snake Eyes<\/em> because there is less of a hard rock groove to the riffs and more of a straight-on edginess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, the expansion of the use of double bass drum and multi-tom drum fills further pushes the music toward the metal side, especially when Dale has adopted the more abrasive and higher pitched vocal tendencies \u2013 prevalent on many of his more recent metal releases \u2013 on most of the songs here. While I don\u2019t perceive this necessarily a negative, it does render the songs a bit more metallic when compared to the more recent release Snake Eyes<\/em>. And there are some moments here, \u201cBurning from Within,\u201d with the long vocal narrative, that definitely take us back to those early years (think, \u201cHeroes\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, as with most of the Bride releases, there is always a fair amount of diversity. So while the pace, vocal aggression and lyrical scope falls more on the old meets new metal vibe, the music remains distinctly Bride \u2026 and that means groove, rock and roll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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