SilentScream213 Quite plainly, one of my personal favorite albums ever released. Despite that, I have trouble finding the right words to paint such a picture. If you’ve heard the album, it speaks for itself. If you haven’t yet heard it…

Imagine your world has just been shattered. Not in any vague sense, no – the person you care about and trust most in the whole world has just betrayed you. Initially you feel intense, stabbing pain; the world as you knew it is no more. Your vulnerable, unguarded heart takes the full brunt of the blow from the one you least expected to ever hurt you. Or, maybe you always knew. The pain sets, stays, and eats away at all you are.

Then the implications set in. If the person you cared about most in the whole world betrayed you, how can you trust anyone? How can you trust yourself? It was you who let your guard down around them, after all. Anxiety. Pain. Insanity. Pain. Paranoia. Pain. A desire to escape, by any means necessary…

Then comes the anger, the hate. They did this to you. They should be the one suffering for this. You’d love a chance to pay that back. You dare, you hope for them to make another mistake and give you any excuse.

But as time passes, memories remain. And there were so many good memories. There was love, once. Flashes of passion and genuine feeling come back, and once more the unavoidable pain starts again. It hurts because you loved them. It still hurts because a part of you still loves a part of them.

Regret. Genuine, existential regret. One of the worst feelings a human can feel. What have you lost? What have you become? Could things have gone differently? Is it your fault? Can you have one more chance?

Eventually, there is acceptance. It is the only way to carry on. But this isn’t exactly a happy ending. It’s simply s transition that allows time to keep moving. Flashes of everything still hit. The toll of the experience still weighs heavy. An unfortunate shade of misanthropy might persist. But one must keep living, and moving forward. An “It is what it is” and a carrying on towards destiny.

Breaking from that, the only weakness here is the title track, which doesn’t fit with the theme, mood, sound, or anything at all really. It’s fine on its own, but far below the quality and power of the rest of the album.

SilentScream213 Eternity is somewhat of a transitional album in Anathema’s discography (though what isn’t, with how often they changed sounds). This one is quite a big shock though, coming from the Death Doom of The Silent Enigma. Here, Anathema have completely fused Doom and Gothic Metal, and added in liberal amounts of Progressive Rock and ethereal ambience. And that last bit is very important; in stark contrast to The Silent Enigma’s deathly, ominous shadow of despair, Eternity is an ethereal, atmospheric, bittersweet cry of passion.

Although still very doomy and quite heavy in places, Eternity is elegant and airy. This is so well displayed in the intro and following track Angelica. Familiar, plodding Doom drumming and chords back an otherwise heavenly, melodic piece of music, as a slow lead guitar melody weaves through its golden air. The vocals are another important part; so poignant, full of passion, grief, and love. The rest of the album follows a similar pattern, combing the familiar Doomy drumming, guitar chords and general atmosphere of melancholia with nearly the polar opposite in graceful synths and gentle lead melodies, always contrasting this bitter sense of loss with unending love and hope. This was really a landmark release in the more melodic strains of Doom and Gothic Metal.

This one doesn’t get as much love as either the album before nor the many after, and I will never understand why. It was such a unique, unforeseen progression of the Gothic Doom genre and remains a unique and beautiful release. The album sounds super dated, especially because of those cheesy synths, and I LOVE it that much more for it. Even the album cover. It just screams this 90’s aesthetic. Wonderful, wonderful album.

SilentScream213 Much like it took some time for Death Metal to shed its Thrash roots, and Doom Metal to evolve out of Trad Doom, so too did Death Doom undergo a lengthy transitional phase. In the late 80’s into the early 90’s, Death Doom was, more or less, slow Death Metal, and many of the early releases no longer represent what the genre would become. In time, Death Doom added its signature focus on atmosphere and melancholia, and became something completely separate from Death Metal, named more so for the inclusion of harsh vocals and other extreme metal tropes.

The Silent Enigma is one of the earliest examples of Death Doom in its fully fleshed out form, completely forgoing any hint of Death Metal stylistically and taking a full focus on crafting melodic yet crushing pieces of dark atmosphere and morose despair. A surprising amount of energy is found here, with the opening track aggressively assaulting you with poetic shrapnel of hopelessness. A great deal of variety is found in the following tracks, with classic plodding Doom full of panic-attack inducing atmospheres, gentle gothic style interludes, and a few that sit somewhere in between. The penultimate track, A Dying Wish, remains a crowning achievement of Death Doom, the 8-minute track delivering an uncompromising death throe of mourning and regret.

Peacock Feather When you start talking about what is dear to you and loved to the depths of your heart and soul, it is always difficult to find the right words, epithets, metaphors to describe the feelings and emotions burning inside you. If We're Here Because We're Here stole my heart, used it a little and fed it, and then returned it to its rightful owner, then Weather Systems made this heart its own property.

All the best things start at the very end, and my introduction to Anathema began with the closing Internal Landscapes. I was blown away by how sensual it was, how genuinely sincere, and how the pathos was twisted to the maximum. I delayed my acquaintance with the album itself a little, coming to it gradually. I had already fallen in love with the Untouchable dilogy and the above-mentioned song, but I was afraid to be disappointed sometimes, even though I already knew that Anathema would be serious and lasting with me. And for the first time, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be.

To be honest, the whole Weather Systems is built on the same patterns, both its own and the patterns of the last album. All the songs follow basically the same canons, the same pattern, but that doesn't mean, damn it, that the album is monotonous and bad. I think I was able to see such an elusive feature of this album, as a complete immersion inside myself and inside the band itself, to be precise, inside Danny himself, who again became the author of almost all the songs on the album, only The Storm Before The Calm was written by John Douglas. No wonder Danny himself says that it is difficult for him to listen to Weather Systems, since the lyrics on the album are very personal for the older of Cavanaghs.

The deep emotionality of the release at some point completely conquered me, and I could no longer resist the endless beauty of this almost masterpiece. Neither the extraterrestrial majesty of Untouchable, nor the perfect embodiment of femininity in the person of Lee Douglas and her solo part in Lightning Song, nor the duality of The Storm Before The Calm (for a reason it is so different from the other songs on the album, due to the direct involvement of the drummer already mentioned above), nor the softness and lightness of The Beginning and the End, nor the epic melancholy of Internal Landscapes. Truly, there are no passing compositions for me here, Weather Systems have long, deeply and reliably settled in my heart. This is the best album of Anathema of the new period, which is slightly inferior to Judgment, but by a large margin wins over all other albums. I just don't know what words to choose for this album, these songs, when there is only one endless delight burning in my mouth.

Peacock Feather For 7 long years, Anathema did not release anything big and new, but during this period the band held many concerts, which resulted in the reconciliation of Danny and Vinnie, as well as as many as 2 concert DVDs, on one of which, for example, a whole Comfortably Numb was covered. And in 2008, the band released a good acoustic compilation, Hindsight, in which the old hits of the band were transformed in a softer light (although, it would seem, much lighter), especially for Fragile Dreams and Angelica. Well, not about this collection, but about the album, which presented the band in a new, fully formed guise of the apostles of light, love and goodness, and if you are not sick of the combination of these 3 words in one sentence, then most likely, you will definitely have a good relationship with the new Anathema.

From the very first notes of Thin Air and the first lines uttered by Vinnie's gentle voice, you are immersed in this bright, sunny atmosphere, you feel that love is really freedom in time and peace. The meeting with the inevitable is delayed by the restless and nervous, but awesome Summer Night Horizon, which is a kind of light greeting to the beginning of the noughties, and then... the infinitely magical and touching Dreaming Light, my personal favorite, Everything, from which the stingy male tears of happiness strive to spill, the truly angelic song Angels Walk With Us, in which the vocals are performed by the notorious Ville Valo from HIM, and the epic A Simple Mistake with almost the best crescendo in the history of the band. And the overall impression of the album is not at all spoiled by either the frank filler Get Off Get Out, or the slightly delayed instrumental Hindsight, which closes the album (although this will still affect the final score). To tell you the truth, if I were in the guys' shoes, I would have made Universal the final song. Of all the songs of Anathema written by Vinnie, this one is his best work. At its core, it really feels like the final chapter of WHBWH, summing up everything Cavanagh/Douglas have had to say over the past 7 years.

By the way, a remarkable fact: all this splendor was mixed together by the maestro Steven Wilson, known to you all from his work in Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Blackfield and many other bands/projects. We're Here Because We're Here is by all accounts a great album that has already become a lifetime classic among the band's fans. If the guys would get rid of Get Off Get Out – I would give this work an unquestionable top ten or close to it.

Conor Fynes 'A Moment In Time' - Anathema (5/10)

First off, might I say that the rating for this work is not based on the music itself. 'A Moment In Time' is being rated here for what it is; a piece of visual media. The songs themselves are amazing, and have been commended as such on other reviews. As far as being a vessel for such beautiful music however, this DVD really comes up short. There are so many errors that make it a sloppy creation, that could have been avoided and corrected had extra care been given.

As far as the musical arrangement goes, things are really good. As well as the band performing, there is a string quartet that plays throughout, as well as a guest appearance from a talented female vocalist. The vocal passion I generally expect from Vincent Cavanagh is a bit lacking here, but that can be forgiven. There's a nice setup here, a beautiful selection of songs, so what could go wrong?

Throughout watching 'A Moment In Time,' I find myself increasingly agitated over the camera work. The camera is fixated on the vocalist, and fails to give a visual mention to either the bass player or rhythm guitarist almost at all!

Another issue is the recording of the sound. For example, during the climax of 'Empty,' the vocals drown out completely for a few seconds. For a band that's had such a high standard of musical quality, my jaw dropped at how they could ever let a DVD release come out to the general public with that sort of negligence.

Despite it's flaws and failure as a professional DVD release however, being an Anathema fan; it's hard to not at least find some enjoyment in it, and there's an CD counterpart included as well! Two stars.