THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, The Year Of Our Lord (2002, Willowtip)

The skull:
This looks like the homemade invitation to someone’s Halloween party. Someone who takes Halloween entirely too seriously, but is also not very good at it. You know the type. Like, sure, winged skulls can be pretty scary, but this winged skull is not, and while I’m sure the card-making program made it easy to wrap the whole thing in those borders, were they really a good idea? And what the fuck does any of this have to do with The Year Of Our Lord? Unless your lord is Charlie, nothing.

The music:
With a cover like this, I fully expected some kind of biker doom, but The Year Of Our Lord are a pretty decent melodic death metal band. It was only after I started listening to them that I noticed they were on Willowtip, a label that is very unlikely to have ever signed a sludge band or whatever. Anyway, this is specifically that kind of melodic death metal where you’d expect to hear a violin (or a synthesized simulation thereof) and the lyrics are about windswept moors and other other mopey, romantic shit. Romantic like Lord Byron, not Jackie Collins. Now, I love a clubfooted playboy as much as the next guy, but that’s not really my scene. If you like your MDM brooding and gothic, however, this band is WAY better than their art would suggest, and you’d probably enjoy them.
— Friar Johnsen