ANATHEMA: ETERNITY (1996)
1) Sentient; 2) Angelica; 3)
The Beloved; 4) Eternity Part I; 5) Eternity Part II; 6) Hope; 7) Suicide Veil;
8) Radiance; 9) Far Away; 10) Eternity Part III; 11) Cries On The Wind; 12)
Ascension.
«Inspired» (is this the right word here?) by
the illness and death of the Cavanaghs' mother, Eternity is the first Anathema album that is quite hard to
technically classify as heavy metal at all, even if I wouldn't go as far as to
label it «progressive rock» instead. Rather, they preserve and amplify all the
soft elements that may be typical of artistically inclined metal bands — the
dark folk atmospheres, the acoustic guitars, the mournful vocals, the quiet
gloom — while at the same time downplaying the deep-black distorted rumble of
the metal guitars, in the place of which you will here frequently find a guitar
sound much closer to grunge and alt-rock. So it's more like «de-metallized
metal» than a 180-degree transition to some other genre — and, of course, the
one thing that stays completely the same is the band's total commitment to the
bleakness and depression of their vision. The mark of Cain is not to be washed
off that easy.
This is not necessarily bad — imagine, say,
Black Sabbath releasing an entire LP of ʽPlanet Caravansʼ, ʽSolitudesʼ, and
ʽLaguna Sunrisesʼ with just a couple of ʽWheels Of Confusionʼ in between — but
on their first try, Anathema do not seem to be doing a very good job with it.
In terms of pure atmosphere, Eternity
is indeed a major step forward, and the lack of growling vocals makes it
possible to put it on in the neghbors' presence without excessive blushing. But
as far as memorable themes or unique personality is concerned, the album is
fairly boring. The textures are easily comprehensible — some minor bass chords,
some dark acoustic strum, some overdubs with wailing-weeping electric guitars
and some distorted feedback for background canvas — but the songs,
subsequently, are largely indistinguishable from each other.
The only exception is ʽHopeʼ, sounding more
like a righteous prayer than a depressed lament and having the good sense to
arm itself with some cool riffs, including a shrill siren-like four-note
electric sequence that provides the song with a stronger, calcium-enriched
skeleton. Ironically, this is the only song not
written by the band — it's a Roy Harper cover, with Harper himself appearing as
a guest star with some spoken narration in the intro, which pretty much tells
us all we want to know. And speaking of the Harper / Pink Floyd connection
(ʽHopeʼ itself was co-written by Harper with Gilmour), yes, Eternity is the first of many Anathema
albums where Floyd influence becomes very clearly visible, but it is one thing
to be influenced by your predecessors, and quite another thing to show that
you yourself are worthy of being influenced by them. As it is, I have not found
any particular musical touches on this record that would even begin to approach
the melodic genius of Floyd.
They do have the best of intentions, but
neither brother Vince's vocals (too dusky and mid-rangey to compete with a
Robert Smith, too autumnal and sentimental to have the grip of a Roger Waters)
nor brother Danny's guitars (too often relying on metal / alt-rock /
ambient-prog clichés) are stunning on their own, and multiplying one so-so by
another in this world violates the laws of math: instead of so-so squared, you
get the square root of so-so squared. Except in specific cases like the truly
awful ʽSuicide Veilʼ, where you put brother Vince totally upfront, so that for
most of the time, he just bleeds out of your speakers on a pallet of hushed
symph-synths and minimalistic bass — here we have the square root of so-so, period, and a desire to rush him off to
the ER as fast as you can, before his veins run empty due to theatrical
overcalculation. Elsewhere, he at least operates under a more respectable
musical cover (over-emoting on your guitar, for some reason, is always less of
a crime than over-emoting on your vocal pipes), but still, that does not make
any of these songs easier to describe and identify as specific meaningful
entities. The good news is, they would learn to do better in the future; the
bad news is, in between their brief wobble on the stepping stone of Silent Enigma and their landing on the
relatively safe coast of Alternative 4,
they had to make the plunge, and Eternity
is it — thumbs
down, unless you just happen to be an instant fan of every song that propagates some form of
suicide.
P.S. Oh, and, by the way, the producer on this
album was Tony Platt — incidentally, the very same guy who was responsible for
producing Cheap Trick's The Doctor
back in 1986. Coincidence? Not what I'd like to believe, no.
No comments:
Post a Comment