DISTANT SATELLITES

They have everything but Rock on their music, they have Ambient, Post Rock, Alternative Rock, Indie Pop, Electronic.... but not Prog ROCK.

I tried several Anathema albums, including the 'everybody's love' last album Weather Systems (2012). I told myself that this music wasn't for me and that I wouldn't listen to it again, but what can I say, I'm a hopeful guy, so I gave it a try on their new album Distant Satellites (2014).

For the fans, that mainly are not Prog fans but Post- Prog-Kscope fans, it'll hit the nail, right on the head. It's Pop but full of 'somber-teenager-dark-angst-don't-know- where-I'm-going' kind of music. But this time without excitement. I admit that even if it's not my kind of music Anathema had some puzzled melodies on the previous album, here it seems so... dull, for the new mass of fans they got on the last couple of years.

'The Lost Song, Part 1' is interesting, 'Dusk (Dark Is Descending)' despite of its horrible lyrics too. The rest of the album is just... I don't know, teenager music I suppose, a kind of desperated melancholy that doesn`t really seems to be true, for me it looks as if it's just for the record, if you know what I mean. At some point it seems I'm listening some Coldplay or some 30 Seconds To Mars, which definitelly doesn't help the album at all. Not to mention that a track like 'The Lost Song, Part 3' is just a rip-off from Radiohead's Amnesiac (2001) era (but without the power of the original).

Side note: 'You're Not Alone' is one of the worst excuses to record a song ever, it's almost ofensive to this song to be in an album considered to be from a 'Prog Rock' band.

They say that Anathema's music is supposed to be something more profound, something to be appreciated with calm, with attention, that it's beautiful music. But it's hard when most of the time the music on the album reminds you of something else and it's hard when the lyrics are so adolescent and meaningless. I pass, there's thousands of real soulful records around.

Possibly the fans will never agree with me, possibly many people will just say that I'm full of bull****... Well, I say that I'm right and that in a couple of years this kind of music will be burnt. Releases like this (and dozens of other copy bands) will burn this so called sub-genre so hard that no one else will want to listen to it in a few years. Well, that pretty much sums this album for me RIGHT NOW.

Pass, next one, please.

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