SAVIOUR

Saviour is the debut albums of Antimatter, a British band that was put together by Duncan Patterson when he left Anathema after the release of their 1998 album Alternative 4, and teamed up with his old friend and schoolmate Mick Moss - a "bedroom songwriter" who had always been involved in writing songs and producing music, but without ever releasing any material. The duo brought in a few more musicians to complete the project, most notably a pair of female singers, Michelle Richfield (also a former Anathema collaborator, having guested on both Eternity and Alternative 4) and Hayley Windsor (Drugs Free America). The two ladies share the majority of the vocal lines on the album, with Mick Moss making appearances on a couple of tracks. Former Cradle of Filth and soon-to-be Anathema keyboardist Les Smith also joins in. providing help with sampling and programming (together with Brian Moss), while Robert "Mags" Magoolagan provides a guitar solo on the album closing track.

With these strong echoes of Anathema in the band's line-up, you may wonder whether Antimatter sound anything like the much-loved Liverpudlian band. The answer is "no" if you think about anything that Anathema have released before or after Alternative 4. However, Antimatter's Saviour sounds exactly like the introverted brother of Anathema's Alternative 4, if you can think of a version of that album where the more overt metal influences have been replaced by conspicuous electronic and trip-hop vibes, and the mood and atmosphere has veered even more decidedly towards the downcast and the dismayed, if possible.

The connection between Saviour and Alternative 4 is obvious already from the cover art (same theme, same color, even same font type for the album title) and is almost inevitable, given that Duncan Patterson is one of the main songwriters on both records. On Saviour, Patterson continues to explore the dark, hallucinated, vaguely Roger Waters-esque atmospheres that he had pasted all over Alternative 4. The main differences lie in the brushes he uses to paint the bleak picture, rather than in the colors. If on Alternative 4 the music lived off the juxtaposition between gentle piano motifs and rough guitar distortion, on Saviour the use of programmed drums, samples and beats dominates the music instead, giving the album a very distinctive electronic feel that often veers into the realm of trip-hop, reminding us of bands like Massive Attach and Portishead. Distorted electric guitars are used seldom, and are instead replaced by acoustic guitars and keyboard textures. There is also a touch of singer-songwriter style in some of the tracks, particularly those penned by Moss, reflecting his own writing style, while Patterson's tracks are more sample/keyboard based and are more experimental. The alternation between these two types of tracks (hallucinated and electronic on the one hand, more relaxed and guitar-driven on the other) is actually one of the winning points of the album, as it creates a nice variation across tracks that helps keep the listener entertained. The album sports some beautiful, minimalistic arrangements that add to the claustrophobic, sinister atmosphere of the music. The vocals (sometimes processed) are also beautifully arranged and performed - Michelle Richfield's style is more melodic and accessible, while Hayley Windsor is more histrionic and experimental (and she in fact mostly features on Patterson's tracks).

There isn't a single bad track on this album, and the album is very suitable to be listened to as a whole, given the coherent and immersive atmosphere it manages to create. Nevertheless, some tracks definitely stand out (and have in fact stayed to this day on Antimatter's concert setlist). "Over Your Shoulder" and "The Last Laugh" are two of these. They are both Moss-penned, guitar-driven, singer-songwriter numbers, featuring both Richfield and Moss behind the mic. These are classic Moss songs, melodic, deeply emotional and very dramatic, with a chorus that sticks into your ears on first listen and very poetic and bleak lyrics. Among the more experimental tracks written by Patterson, "Holocaust", "Psalms", and "Going Nowhere" are all excellent. The latter reprises the notes of the piano motif that had first appeared on "Destiny" from Alternative 4 and adds a ticking clock and hallucinated vocals by Windsor to convey its sombre meditations about death. If possible, Patterson is even more hallucinated and experimental on the ominous "God Is Coming" that reminds me of the title-track of the Alternative 4 album. Meanwhile, "Angelic"(the only track co-written by Moss and Patterson) is split between and acoustic, ballad-like first-half and an electronic, almost industrial second-half. "Flowers" follows a similar structure and in its initial bars brings to mind The Gathering.

In short, Saviour is a very strong debut album by Antimatter. It reproduces that magic, almost mystical atmosphere that Patterson had managed to create on Anathema's Alternative 4 album, but at the same time it is much more than a simple copy of that previous record. Free of the burden of Anathema's musical heritage, Patterson is here free to explore and experiment with new sounds and influences and can thus bring its hallucinated, obsessive visions into new musical territories that move away from metal and towards the world of electronic music. It is a beautiful hybrid, made all more intriguing by the injections of exquisite singer-songwriter sensibilities brought in by Patterson's bandmate Mick Moss. The duo, with their different but complementary influences and their shared penchant for dark, brooding atmospheres, constitutes a formidable songwriting pair that will produce two more strong albums under the banner Antimatter, before Patterson left the band. Although Antimatter will go on to produce many more excellent records, Saviour holds a special place in my musical collection, because it was the first, and perhaps the purest and most exciting, collaboration between this amazing pair of artists.