Three-Dimensional Doom: My Dying Bride's “Your Broken Shore” (2020)

Yorkshire's My Dying Bride (MDB) are regularly viewed as the founding fathers of the doom metal movement. Along with other associated/amalgamated subgenres (symphonic-doom; gothic-doom; death-doom; epic-doom, etc.) doom metal emphasizes slow performance tempi/subdivisions, which is regularly accompanied by a focus on atmosphere/ambience. The slower performance aesthetics involved in doom metal music provides greater space between the notes/musical events, sometimes referred to as inter-onset intervals (IOIs). IOIs are the length of time between the musical events of a given performance; so the interval between the onset of one transient and the onset of the next transient. IOIs have a profound impact on the way we perceive the frequency content, dynamics, and ambience/effects of recorded music. Music that has relatively large IOIs, reflecting slower performances/subdivisions (which, in addition to doom metal, includes most hip-hop and R&B) affords greater space for both reverb/ambience and longer/slower low-frequency wavelengths, to expire within before the next performance event. Using “Your Broken Shore” by My Dying Bride as a case study, this chapter's analytic goals are to examine and provide an understanding of how the “space between the notes” of slower performances can be manipulated and optimized.