Masterpiece - Serenades is a masterpiece in doom metal. The music its really hard, I read the reviews of other customers who say this album sound a bit repetitive and I disagree. Maybe other albums like ¨Memorandum¨ from Lacrimas profundere are more accesible with variety on voices and instruments, but Serenades is Classic Death/Doom metal (death metal vocals over slow dense guitar riffs). In this case Anathema show a beautiful sense of melody in tracks like ¨Lovelorn rapsody¨ and ¨Sleepless¨ On the other side they have songs like ¨They die¨ that is heavy, slow and raw. A must have for any metal enthusiast.
Defining Doom Metal - I gotta say that this is one of my favorite doom metal albums. Slow and boring? Not at all. This is doom metal, folks, not speed metal, not pop rock, or pink floyd inspired rock (like later Anathema). The first time I heard this many years ago, my knee-jerk reaction was that all songs sounded the same. But then again, I was coming from a Metallica background and didn t really understand what doom metal meant.Each song on this album has a core doom riff as its core, which has a number of different elements, which may appear choppy to most. The whole song plays with the riff, building on it and with each progression smoothing out the riff until the whole song sounds more smooth for lack of a better word. Of course the two guitars on each song play against each other sometimes offsetting sometimes complementing.With each listen, you move beyond the superficial (some might call it the same boring riff), and dig deeper and discover different layers of the song.Give this a try, you ll see what I mean. And do not try and compare this with their subsequent releases - its totally different - though the sound is still there.Vocals are great with Darren White leading. They nicely complement the music. I believe this is the only album which he sang on. Defining Doom Metal.
Nice sound, a bit repetitive - Anathema, along with several others in the early to mid 90 s helped defined the sound for doom metal. This album only touches the surface of the doom metal scene. The overall feel of the album (by about song 5 or 6) is boring. There are some songs that are definitely worth the listen such as Sweet Tears. The album starts off fairly strong and quickly lapses into a boring repetition of the exact same melodies over and over again. If Anathema had been able to keep some of the energy of the earlier songs throughout this would have probably rated higher, but with the last half (at least) of the album being unbearable it will have to remain at 2 stars.
Masters of the misery - If you ve discovered Anathema through recent releases such as Judgement & A Fine Day to Exit you may find Serenades a tough listen. Unlike the Pink Floyd, Jeff Buckley & Radiohead tones of today Serenades has its roots firmly set in the English death-doom metal scene that was so popular in the early 1990s. If you can recall Turn Loose the Swans era My Dying Bride & Gothic era Paradise Lost then you ll know what s in store: slow, bludgeoning & gothic riffs with Darren White s take it or leave it vocals that fall somewhere between Glenn Benton s grunts (Deicide) & the melodramatic wailing of Thomas Gabriel Warrior (Celtic Frost).What made Serenades superior to the competition at the time was the Cavanagh brothers ability to come up with some ridiculous catchy riffs to give life to what could easily become a dirge. The chorus to Lovelorn Rhapsody regally soars head & shoulders above everything else on the album, Je Fait... is an indicator of the band s future direction, the verses to Sweet Tears bounce along & Sleepless is a tidy, if lyrically weak goth pop number. The only real moments of out & out introspective misery are Sleep in Sanity , a filler by anyone s measure, & the greatly superior Under a Veil . If you want a real indicator of how miserable these guys can get then the extra tracks from The Crestfallen EP that are tagged onto the CD are even heavier, slower & more challenging.If you can cope with doom-death stuff from the early 1990s then you will find no finer album of its genre, but if you prefer the more melodic direction taken by the band in recent years I d advise you begin with Judgement .
the Anathema challenge - Clocking at near 70 minutes, I challenge anyone who listens to this album to stay awake for serenade s entire duration. can anyone do it? I really don t think so. I cannot believe Anathema had the nerve to call Darren a vocalist, because all I heard was moaning..... and THAT wasn t even in key!!!Yes, there are 2 or 3 decent tracks on here.... Sleepless and the two that feature acoustics and female vox.... Buy alternative 4 or judgement