WE'RE HERE BECAUSE WE'RE HERE

The six years between albums seems to have been spent well. There's a greater beauty and lushness of melody in these songs and a greater overall aural experience. The vocals are better with a more intertwined use of female vocals. I've enjoyed Anathema's music ever since Alternative 4, but it seemed like they always fell a bit short, didn't quite have it all crystallised. With this album though, I think they've hit all the right notes. Experimental/Post Metal, yeah probably, in a musically traditional kind of way. If they had a poppy tune in here you could even say it's Crossover Prog, but no, this is all pretty dark and gloomy, and while the numerous melodies swirl you up and lodge in your head, you probably won't be humming the tune when it's over.

There's some manic drumming to keep the up-tempo parts off kilter and some noisy guitars to connect them to their roots and lift the album out of the slow brood.

But it is the flow of the album which works better than past relaeases, there aren't any parts which drag on going nowhere. Most songs build to some kind of climax to keep things interesting. It all kind of fits. The result is you can listen from start to finish. Whilst I think each of their past albums fell a bit short here and there, on focus, on melody, on flow, on consistency of songs, I think this one has hit the mark.

An excellent addition to any prog rock collection, maybe more, we'll see what the passage of time says.