Anathema

Seven albums in, these UK suicide cases keep morphing and maturing, which is a welcome thing indeed; but something about A Natural Disaster just doesn’t seem quite as engaging as their last album, the great A Fine Day To Exit. Maybe I’m just not morbidly depressed right now, because as always, Anathema have crafted some serious mood music on this album. Continuing along the path they’ve been forging for a while, this has damn near nothing to do with metal whatsoever, which in a way really stresses me out, because methinks this band could be a lot bigger if they weren’t marketed primarily in the metal world. Regardless, what we get here are more Pink Floyd-obsessed lite rock tunes, songs that swirl and loiter in some atmosphere I’ve never inhabited, with only an occasional moment of angry rock; but mainly lush, beautiful tunes permeate as always, melodies haunting and keyboards doing their thang. A lyric lifted from Cinderella’s best album and a keyboard riff that sounds one note off from the Twin Peaks theme song round out the proceedings, and I’m left feeling kind of unfulfilled but nevertheless happy that Anathema exist.