February 28, 1993 - Anathema and Serenades

Happy New Year! After a long two and a half month break my first album of the year was released on February, 28, 1993 when Anathema released their debut album "Serenades". But who are Anathema? They are a five-piece band from Liverpool, England and at this stage of their career they play a pretty heavy style of metal that is borderline doom metal/black metal. Anathema was created by brothers Vincent and Danny Cavanagh and they are both guitarists. They are joined by Duncan Patterson on bass, John Douglas on drums and Darren White on lead vocals. Let's check out what Anathema have to offer!

The album begins with "Lovelorn Rhapsody" and it has some nice and heavy chugging guitars leading the way from the Cavanagh brothers. White speaks softly at first but then we hear his real voice and it's pretty deep and gnarly! He has a pretty low scream that sounds very doom-y and it sounds really raw. For 1993, these are some pretty damn heavy vocals and the heavy chugging music makes for a great slow headbanger that is right up my alley. This is the first real screaming to appear in my library, and while it's not very polished it sounds very heavy and I like it. The music is slow but nice and heavy and after a few minutes they speed things up a little and shift to a new riff that also sounds pretty solid. They nicely jam out this faster but still pretty heavy riff until the end of this solid album opener. Up next is "Sweet Tears" and one of the Cavanagh brothers leads the way with a pretty coop and catchy high guitar riff while the rest of the band backs him with a chugging rhythm section. White delivers more long-held, low screams that I like and his voice is much clearer on this one. The lead guitar sounds pretty good the whole way through and the final verse is sung by White with some cool bass from Patterson. White's singing is not very good, but he gives us a couple more nice screams at the end. Track 3 is "J'ai Fait Une Promesse" and all the lyrics on this one are in French and with a female vocalist, making this a quite drastic shift after the first two songs on this album. Ruth Wilson is the singer on this song and she begins by herself and she has a decent enough voice; not what I'd typically listen to but it's not bad. Some light guitar eventually joins in and while this is a decent little short song it seems very out of place and just comes as quite a shock. The next song is over seven minutes and is called "They (Will Always) Die" and it's a return to the chugging doom metal. It's a nice slow burner of a main riff and White screams nice and low overtop to complete the doom-y atmosphere quite nicely. They nicely chug along at a slow pace and the guitars and bass sound pretty cool. Towards the end of the song the heavy music fades away and some keyboards and strings take over for a majestically epic finale to this song. Track 5 is "Sleepless" and it has some less heavy and almost psychedelic guitars while White sings in a low voice that isn't anything special. The chorus is more typical of the other songs with some heavy guitar and more raspy vocals, but it's pretty short. After a few more verses and choruses they shift to a new riff that is heavy and pretty catchy and this sets the stage for a guitar solo! I believe this is the first real solo on the album and it's a fairly solid one as one of the Cavanagh brothers plays a cool guitar solo to finish off this song. Up next is the seven minute "Sleep In Sanity" and it opens with a slow heavy riff that sounds pretty cool as they chug along. One guitarist plays a slow but high riff overtop of the low music for a nice effect and White growls overtop in a pretty gnarly way that is very unpolished but still pretty heavy. After five minutes of solid jamming things get a little quieter, but not for long as they resume the main riff again to close things out. A bit repetitive for a seven minute song, but I still enjoyed it. Track 7 is much shorter at just over a minute and is called "Scars Of The Old Stream". It's just the two Cavanagh brothers on guitar as they play a slow and slightly trippy riff and White kind of sings/talks overtop of it. Whenever he's not growling, White isn't that good of a singer but it's tolerable in this short little track. The ending leads into the next song titled "Under A Veil (Of Black Lace)" and it's another very slow main riff with Douglas and Patterson playing a nice slow rhythm section, one Cavanagh brother playing some slow heavy guitar while the other plays some cool higher guitar and White comes in and out with his low growls. They alternate between this riff and another slow but catchier riff and after about four minutes there's a nice guitar interlude that brings things to a new slow headbanger of a riff. They slowly chug along to this riff for several more minutes until this seven and a half minute epic finally comes to an end. Track 9 is another short song at 2 minutes, called "Where Shadows Dance" and it's driven by a pretty sweet lead guitar riff overtop a typical doom-y background with White just growling "come on" and "let's go". It ends with White whispering overtop a new nice and heavy riff and they repeat this one a few times until it eventually fades to an end. The final song on the album js called "Dreaming: The Romance" and it is 23 minutes and 23 seconds long! It has one very low "riff" in the background that just sounds like a droning organ and then we hear a higher, other keyboard-esque instrument playing some slow and pretty epic stuff overtop. These two droning bits continue for a long time and although there are some nice epic parts, there are also some quite lengthy sections where not a whole lot is happening. This is quite unlike Anathema's usual doom metal style and while a short interlude of this nature I would think is cool, the fact that it's over 23 minutes long certainly makes it feel like things are very, very slowly dragging. Did you know that 23 minutes is a long time? Well it feels even longer listening to this song. What a drab and unexciting way to end an album.

That is the end of "Serenades" and I thought it was a mixed bag of a debut for Anathema. The closing track and the couple shorter songs were all pretty strange and out of character and the other half of the album was a very doom-y style of metal that I enjoyed. Darren White is  not the best vocalist but this is the first instance of real growling/screaming as a lead vocal in my library and I do enjoy the heaviness of it, if not his raw and unpolished voice. The rest of the band played some cool slow, chugging metal and both Vincent and Danny Cavanagh seem like solid metal guitarists. I'm sure Anathema can improve on this debut, and I look forward to hearing what their follow-up is!