A Natural Disaster

If you check out my playlist, more particularly my all-time albums, you will see that Anathema’s sixth album Judgement stands among as one of my all-time favorite albums. This album that unfortunately none here at Metal Reviews ever took the time to review, is the band's finest work to date and shows the pinnacle of the band. I believe indeed that the band will never be able to reach such a high level in terms of songwriting. The band’s last offering A Fine Day To Exit was to me a weak missed attempt to widen its audience to the detriment of its fancore. My fellow teammate Alex made a clever review for this album but unfortunately most of the readers didn't understand his point of view. I also want to say I had no real expectations whatsoever about their new release. Anathema's eighth album A Natural Disaster doesn’t show any real progression compared to A Fine Day To Exit. The music remains for the most part quiet as a dull winter Sunday afternoon and it’s not the rare time the musicians seem to get excited that might awaken the listeners. Of course Anathema’s trademark remains audible as it was on A Fine Day To Exit, but the manner and the result remain far below what’s the band is or was in this case able to do. Long and quiet tracks of piano, a couple of soft guitar solos here and there, the soft voice of Vincent Cannavagh and the very common voice of an unknown female vocalist. No trace of electricity in Electricity, no violence in Violence, no trace of harmony on Harmonium, not the right balance on Balance either and I found nothing on Are You There. That’s what this album has to offer. That’s not much. In fact there's not much to say either about this new album as nothing really seems to happen with A Natural Disaster. In fact I have been listening to this album throughout the last week at work and still I can't figure out what the band meant with this album. A Natural Disaster is indeed a true disaster for all the foremost fans of the band who can’t comprehend the band’s new musical orientation they took with A Fine Day To Exit and they prolonged with their new album. As for myself, I don’t really care about this album after all although it is one of the few my wife will probably let me play in the car while driving on a dull Sunday afternoon.