Anathema: We're Here Because We're Here

Year:  2010

Label:  The End

Catalog Number:  TE 205-2

Format:  CD (2011 special edition in gatefold 7" packaging, with bonus tracks, bonus DVD-A, and 7" vinyl single)

Website:  http://www.anathema.ws

Who could have ever predicted that over the course of their 20-year career, Liverpool’s Anathema would morph from bludgeoning doom-metal growlers into sensitive purveyors of atmospheric prog-rock?  And until now, “uplifting” isn’t a description that most would apply to their music, but surprisingly, that’s exactly the spirit that emanates from many of these tracks.  Their trademark Floydian melancholy is still present in songs such as “Angels Walk Among Us” and the gorgeous “Dreaming Light” (video below) but the dark clouds are soon cleared away as the latter builds to an uplifting crescendo worthy of Sigur Rós. 

Other songs such as “Presence” and “Everything” maintain this rapturous atmosphere, and by the chiming guitar-loop fadeout of the album’s closer, “Hindsight,” the cover image of a figure engulfed in blinding sunshine seems entirely appropriate. 

Well worthy of Classic Rock’s “Progressive Rock Album of the Year” award, and probably my favorite of 2010 as well.

Anathema - Dreaming Light (from We're Here Because We're Here) from Kscope on Vimeo.

Katatonia: Night Is the New Day

Year:  2009

Label:  Peaceville

Catalog Number:  CDVILEF271X
Format:  CD (limited edition digibook with bonus track)
Website:  http://katatonia.com

I’ve never been much of a metalhead—not because I don’t enjoy a good skull-crushing power chord now and again, but because so many of the trappings of that genre just seems so, well, juvenile:  Over-the-top lyrics, bombastic guitar wankery, ridiculously cartoonish album covers, tight leather trousers, and that annoying falsetto screaming (or those bizarre cookie-monster death growls).  Ugh. 

But somewhere along the line, I must have missed the moment when heavy metal grew up.  Because lately I’ve found myself listening to a number of bands that, despite being categorized as such, either refuse to trot out the above clichés, or who have long since abandoned that adolescent phase to mature into an adulthood of intelligent, complex, melodic music.  Recently, quite a number of metal (or formerly-filed-under-metal) bands including Anathema, Opeth, and Ulver have all put out stellar albums of thoughtful, modern progressive rock.  With Night Is the New Day, Sweden’s Katatonia have accomplished this as well. 

Inspired by goth gods Joy Division, Fields of the Nephilim, and The Cure, as well as early doom-metal merchants such as My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost, Katatonia’s songs, as their latest album title suggests, deal in the dark side of human existence, with doom-heavy lyrics of death, decay, loss, and hopelessness.  ”The great end is sweeping in / The dark will rise / Abandon your freedom,” vocalist Jonas Renske despairingly sings on the jackhammering opening track “Forsaker,” the heaviest (yet catchiest) song on the album.  Resignation to subjugation, oppression, and/or death seems to be a central theme of Night Is the New Day, appearing again in “Departer,” "Nephilim," "Day and Then the Shade," and the beautifully orchestral “Inheritance,” where Renske sings of letting go of free will (“our inconvenient burden”) with such a mellow nonchalance that it seems like he’s already given up to “[t]he unforgiving void / The forge in which our values burn.” 

Renske’s languid, dreamlike vocals are the antithesis of the heavy metal scream, and are one of Katatonia’s strongest points:  They seem to float hazily far above a wall of razor-sharp guitars and a muscular rhythm section anchored with machinelike precision by drummer Daniel Liljekvist.  This contrast is used to best effect in the chorus of “Onward Into Battle,” where the juxtaposition of a simple vocal melody over a complex instrumental time signature makes it seem as if the band are playing two completely different songs at once.  Throughout the album, the music is further enhanced by subtle electronic touches—clanking drum machines, bubbling synthesizer sequences—and understated orchestral flourishes that add a lushness to the album’s quieter moments.