Anathema s moment of glory - Continuing to explore the realms of atmospheric - experimental rock music started on Eternity , Anathema released Alternative 4 in 1998. Alternative 4 moves in the same style with Eternity but in a more straightforward rockish style and seeing the band improve in many aspects. The first serious improvement is the vocals of singer Vincent Cavanagh who seemed to have mastered and improved it within the two years time between the albums. The other major improvement is clearly in the songwriting. While the songs are simpler, they are definitely more emotional and complete with hints of depression here and there. The lyrical content of this album has a lot to do with human emotions and especially anger. As a matter of fact ,songs like Empty and Re-Connect are filled with anger towards the people who have betrayed or abandoned you in difficult situations. The music together with the lyrics merge together to create an emotional vessel on which the listener can travel to distant places and escape from his everyday problems and worries, and therein lies the beauty of this album. It is not only a beautiful listening experience but also a means of escape from the cruelty of this world and this makes it one of my favorite albums and my best pick for an Anathema album. Try putting this whenever in a difficult situation or a moment of extreme anger and see what I mean. Highest possible recommendation!
They ve done better - Every band seems to have at least one album that isn t up to par with the rest of their catalog. For Anathema, that album is Alternative 4. In no way am I saying the album is terrible, it s actually quite good. However, with albums like Eternity and The Silent Enigma prior to this release and Judgement and A Fine Day To Exit after, Anathema have raised the bar for themselves above and beyond merely producing a good album. My main problem with this album is the songs have to a tendency to get very bland on occasion. There s some true Doom classics on here but there s just as many or more songs that you ll end up skipping past. The sound is pretty much the same Pink Floyd on prozac asthetic they have on all their releases, they just add some violins and piano interludes to spice things up a bit. If your a long time Anathema fan you won t be disappointed in the least bit with this release but if you re just getting into the band this probably isn t the best place to start. Eternity, Judgement and A Fine Day To Exit are far better.
4.5 stars - Let me start off this review by saying that the only reason I gave this cd 4.5 stars is because I felt the cd was incomplete without the instrumental version of The Silent Enigma after Destiny.Some of the best metal songs I have ever heard are on this cd. The first being my all time favorite metal song, Fragial Dreams, and others being Lost Control and Inner Silence. Fragial Dreams is a song I listened to more times then any other song on any cd. This cd also contains some of the most beautiful guitar leads I ve ever heard. And the solo on Lost Control is a classic. The acoustic guitar is just beautiful. Other songs that stand out on this cd are Regret and Destiny. This is the cd where Vincent s voice really makes a big improvement. On Eternity, his voice sounded good, but the improvement feally stands out on this cd.This is a highly recommemmed cd I think any fan of depressing metal/gothic/meloncholic music should have
Impressive..... - Having recently bought this album,I was more than impressed...Anathema deserve alot more attention to what they are getting in the doom/introspective scene at the moment. The album opens with a beautiful piano piece and gradually builds up,moving through many moods and textured arrangements...The overall production of the album is great,with a crisp clean sound.Their are some beautiful songs on this album,with loss and regret being the main lyrical theme.A few songs stand at from the rest,but they are all worth listening to. Being a mature album musically,it might take more than one listen to get into,but it is definately worth the time and money.