THY SINISTER BLOOM Thy Temperate Veil/ A Vanity Lost Demo '95

"There was once a dream I had..."

And here it is. An epic (22:32mins) exploration of romantic, ambient and soul-sodden doom metal from Dublin, Ireland recorded in 1995. The sleeve artwork and concept (courtesy of vocalist Jeff O'Reilly) was perfect for its time and origin. The atmosphere is bleak yet crisp, growing from a genesis of ambient bleeps, tones and whispers. There is a sense of majesty here as the song develops, somewhat inspired by Anathema's 'Crestfallen' EP issued only a couple of years earlier. Indeed, this recording is a re-recording of the material initially committed to tape in 1994 but lost, somewhere in the studio.

Jeff's vocals are soaring and often fragile, tempered by, once again, 'Crestfallen'-esque (Damien White) growls and earnest declarations. I love it when he rolls his Celtic "rrrrrr"'s! This is ambient stuff - easy to get lost in but at the same time a little torturous. This is doom metal you have to listen to in hindsight. A couple of plays and you'll be pre-empting the movements, soaking it all in. Taken as a whole - as a concept - the music of Thy Sinister Bloom was unique and individual. I remember listening to this on my headphones in bed as a... 19 year old and patiently sweating it out. The rewards... oh yes... lay there at the end - not only in the pushing away of the clammy earpieces but the realisation that for the listener there was/ is a real sense of achievement. Magnificently dreary and yet commanding, bitter, engrossing and ultimately enthralling stuff!

TSB recorded a further demo called 'Fragrant Suncry...' issued in 1996. From a rehearsal tape circulated in 1996 we also find 'Catching Fireflies', 'Glass Galaxies' and 'In Beauty Bound'. Unreleased material for the 'Serein Falls' record saw the band develop into something more ambient and just-out-of-reach. A recorded rehearsal in March of that year lets us in on a raw version of 'Lunar Seas Rising', a track which opens quietly and weaves a little before blossoming into a devastating riff which, according to the inlay of the tape is the blistering version of 'Splendour Flights Gather Like Swine'. And that riff, that explosion, always sets the hairs tingling along my arms and the back of my neck. One of those (mostly) unheard classics.

The band's material is slowly being revealed on MySpace so get your Google fingers tapping in the details.