ANATHEMA: THE SILENT ENIGMA (1995)
1) Restless Oblivion; 2)
Shroud Of Frost; 3) ...Alone; 4) Sunset Of The Age; 5) Nocturnal Emission; 6)
Cerulean Twilight; 7) The Silent Enigma; 8) A Dying Wish; 9) Black Orchid.
And here we have it — a big step forward, as
the band gets rid of its lead vocalist and opts for a less clichéd, more
ambitious sound. Technically, The Silent
Enigma may still be labeled as doom metal, but now it has a significant
soft component as well; and guitarist Vincent Cavanagh, taking over the vocal
duties, largely dumps the cartoonish guttural growling (possibly just because
he was not able to master the technique, but thank God for that anyway) and
sings in a variety of tones that range from stone-cold, half-spoken recitals
to snarling screaming: still theatrically exaggerated, but at least somewhat
relatable, if you make a strong effort to believe that here before you stands a
demonically possessed lyrical hero from the Middle Ages.
Not that I am advocating to take this album too
seriously: like almost any doom metal, what we have here is an elaborately
staged «black mass» performance whose formal aspects (guitar tones, melodic
structure, production, overdubbed effects, etc.) are far more alluring than any
direct emotional impact. But this particularity only has to be stated once and
then discarded as something self-evident — if an album like this truly «rocks
your world» and makes you empathize with the protagonist, all I can say is take
it easy, brother, we're not quite on the threshold of the Apocalypse yet, and
life goes on even after your beautiful long-haired bride, to whom you were
going to get married on a lovely, jasmine-scented Sunday morning, expired from
bubonic plague while still wearing her wedding dress, and left you forever
cursing God's name because that's what everybody does in a situation like this.
"My paralysed heart is bleeding", "condemned to misery, restless
oblivion forever", "lost deity betrayed my faith", you know the
drill.
We'll just push all of that right out of the
way and try and concentrate on the music (because, honestly, the album would
have worked much better in fully instrumental form). This is where the
Cavanaghs begin to develop and exploit some really enticing ideas — ʽRestless
Oblivionʼ, for instance, begins with a minute-long soft exposition (a modest
and lovely folk-pop guitar melody dominating the waves), then smoothly, but
firmly slips into a crushing «ninth-wave-style» metal riff, and then, adopting
a weird time signature, begins riding a curious double-tracked guitar sinusoid
that has a certain hypnotic quality to it. With all the interludes and all the
alternations between melodic and metallic bits, it's a fairly solid piece of
music, with only the silly lyrics and the «possessed» vocals presenting them
spoiling the picture (frankly, I'd say that the music on its own does not even
properly convey the feeling of bleek despair that the words keep talking about
— the melody is disturbing, tempestuous, but not dirge-like, and I'd rather
have it left open for free interpretation rather than follow the words
directly).
Since the intended mood is quite uniform for
all the tracks here, they largely fall into two (and even then, somewhat
overlapping) categories — «rowdier» numbers, based on more precisely
fleshed-out guitar and bass riffs, and «moodier» numbers, relying more on the
atmospherics of multiple sustained notes than on headbanging tricks. Thus,
ʽShroud Of Frostʼ is basically just one prolonged guitar wail, with minimal melody
and protracted notes that sometimes seem to go on until the amplifier runs out
of battery support; unfortunately, since the basic chord sequence is not
exactly an emotional rollercoaster, I find the whole thing rather tedious to
sit through, and would rather prefer ʽA Dying Wishʼ, which moves along at a
higher speed and features a solid chugging riff at its heart (a rather generic
one, though, I'm afraid). On the other hand, ʽNocturnal Emissionʼ combines the
two aspects well — there's a mournful and menacing bass riff at its core, which
is good enough for them to leave it on constant repeat for the last minute of
the song as it slowly fades away, but it's not a headbanging riff, more like a
hand-of-doom riff.
But on the whole, instrumental and stylistic
difference between the various songs is still kept to a minimum, and such
little touches of extra color as female dark folk vocals on ʽ...Aloneʼ (the Dear
Departed was relieved from post-mortem duty for a bit to make one last phone
call to the protagoinst), or a bass/synth-dominated wordless funeral march on the
closing ʽBlack Orchidʼ, do little to change the fact that The Silent Enigma still has tremendous potential to bore you stiff
unless you're really really really into the my-dying-bride thing. Consequently,
I refrain from giving the record a thumbs up, despite all the good words about
certain individual riffs and textures; let us simply agree to call this the
band's «teenage» phase, legitimately succeeding its «childhood» phase on Serenades, and then see where it leads
to in the future.
P.S. Beautiful album sleeve, though, don't you think?
P.S. Beautiful album sleeve, though, don't you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment