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Anathema: Alternative 4
19/07/10 || Altmer
This band has not always been awesome. They mostly are nowadays, but they didn’t always make good music. The reason for that is they were a doom/death metal band in the beginning and they kinda sucked at that. Their original vocalist left and their current singer can’t really growl, and besides that they were more interested in Pink Floyd and Metallica than in all that death/doom metal stuff that was around at the time anyway, so they changed paths.
This album is in the middle of that era of change. There are still lots of metal riffs strewn all over but the vocals are already clean. The depressive atmosphere that this band has always had is also present here and it kind of provides the midway point between their modern day atmospheric rock and their early doom metal phase. Vincent Cavanagh’s vocals mirror those of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters often – a lack of technicality made up for with a whole wad of emotion and character and a Liverpool accent. You know, he has that thing where you feel like he’s about to go crazy and stab himself in the back with twenty knives, but out of pure anguish (not because his goldfish died).
Pink Floyd has always been a major reference point when talking about this band musically speaking and on the later albums that particular side of them was expanded on even more – here we still have some vicious rockers like “Empty”, although the piano interludes are extremely gorgeous. In fact, this is some of the most excellent key use I’ve seen in quite a while – sparing, but conveying the destructive atmosphere, much like on Pink Floyd records (I am sorry for making that comparison throughout but it really, along with Radiohead and Porcupine Tree, is the direction this band leans in).
The lyrics are the height of suicidal though and songs like “Lost Control” make you want to tie the noose already. The slow, brooding music in that song doesn’t help the cause of the happy, it is as if death and sorrow made a pact and decided they would call time on their retirement and take over these guys forever.
I’m coming to an end
I’ve realized what I could have been
I can’t sleep so I take a breath and hide behind my bravest mask
I admit I’ve lost control
There is much more like this on the album and reading through the lyrics booklet will make you a sad, sad sack so if you just want to read about bodily mutilation, this is not the album for you. In fact, the band vies with Katatonia for “depressive band of the decade” and Katatonia only win out marginally because Jonas Renkse’s voice is so gloomy we are all surprised he didn’t inject himself with poison yet. (Vincent’s vocals are less lifeless).
In fact, making the Katatonia comparison is not a bad idea: Katatonia represent apathy and the lack of hope, the lack of feeling, the lack of anything – Anathema represent despair. They represent the panic of having lost all you hoped for. The loss of your mother, your best friend, that kind of thing. Katatonia is the stage where all the losses have settled in and you don’t know better than death and destruction, Anathema is the realization that it is happening, right now, and you can’t do anything to stop it.
Now to the downsides – the songwriting on this album is not as strong as on the later albums. The middle of the album is positively depressing but the songs rather drag (apart from “Inner Silence”) and this part of the album goes nowhere, making it a pain to sit through the album in its entirety. Also, sometimes it feels like the guitars are lacking a slight bit of punch production-wise (the drums are AWESOME though).
It is still quite a majestic album though. Don’t make it your first purchase – both eras of the band have albums that appeal more to their respective lovers – but if you want to hear both worlds colliding, this is the album for you. And whatever you do, make sure you listen to “Fragile Dreams” because that is the single best tune this album has and in their top 3 songs of all time.
Also, if you can, get the reissue, it includes three Pink Floyd covers (that are almost carbon copies of the originals, anyway, that’s how good they are with the PF material), and a BEAUTIFUL rendition of Bad Religion’s “Better off dead”, turning the punkish guitars of the original into a gorgeous piano ballad with strings and female vocals deluxe. That is the single best cover I’ve ever seen.
Recommendation: Work out the middle half of the album a bit more for some memorability.
- Information
- Released: 1998
- Label: Music for Nations
- Website: www.anathema.ws
- Band
- Vincent Cavanagh: vocals, guitars
- Daniel Cavanagh: guitars, keyboards, piano, backing vocals
- Duncan Patterson: bass, keyboards
- Shaun Steels: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Shroud of False
- 02. Fragile Dreams
- 03. Empty
- 04. Lost Control
- 05. Re-Connect
- 06. Inner Silence
- 07. Alternative 4
- 08. Regret
- 09. Feel
- 10. Destiny
- 11. Your Possible Pasts (Pink Floyd cover, bonus track)
- 12. One of the Few (Pink Floyd cover, bonus track)
- 13. Better Off Dead (Bad Religion cover, bonus track)
- 14. Goodbye Cruel World (Pink Floyd cover, bonus track)
