Biography from Last.fm
There is more than one artist with the name Anathema.
1) Anathema is a band from Liverpool, England, UK primarily known as one of the pioneering and leading death doom metal acts, incorporating growling, poetic lyrics and complex arrangements into the traditional doom riffage. Later in their career, beginning with "Eternity", they moved away from this sound into more melodic, atmospheric rock.
Anathema formed in 1990 as a doom metal band, initially under the name Pagan Angel. Read more on Last.fm
We’re starting something new here at Thrash Hits. We’ve asked some of our favourite writers to put together some monthly columns, focussing in on the genres they’re most passionate about. We’re kicking off this new series with David Keevill taking on what’s been going on in Prog over the last month or so. Take it away, David….
It takes talent and force of will for a band to change direction as solidly and successfully as Anathema have done. The last half-decade has seen the band truly shrug off their heavier, more goth-metal roots, becoming trailblazers in the UK prog scene. We sent Cheryl Carter along to the London date of their most recent tour to marvel at Anathema’s enduring appeal.
6 things we learnt while watching Anathema in London:
Anathema
distant satellites
Kscope
09 June 2014
Anathema’s rise as one of England’s premier rock bands has been a long time in its inception with the Liverpudlian group shifting their initial doomed, death metal sound into one that is completely at odds with their first forays into music. The Anathema of today is a band that creates uplifting, soulful landscapes of sound – sounds that bare pure emotion in their presentation and effect. 2012’s Weather Systems was a journey of bittersweet sentiment and this year distant satellites moves even further into the realms of discovery.
Last week, long-running gothicly-tinged progsters, Anathema, released Weather Systems, the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2010’s critical smash, We’re Here Because We’re Here. This gave us the perfect excuse to give the band’s frontman, Vincent Cavanagh, a call, and hope that our resident Anathema fanboy, Hugh Platt, wouldn’t get so excited that he’d forget all his carefully researched questions.
When Kscope announced ‘A Night At The Union Chapel’ we knew it was going to be something truly special. Over the past few years this record label have been putting out some of the finest progressive music around, from Steven Wilson’s solo work to Ulver. Tonight’s one-off showcase features some of their finest talent performing stripped-down sets in an intimate setting. Who else could we send to review it than Amit Sharma?
Just before we saw Anathema live in London at King’s Cross Scala, we caught up with the Liverpudlian Goth-turned-Prog rockers for a chat about stuff. Lead guitarist and songwriter, Daniel Cavanagh was the one who sat down with Amit Sharma to chat in-depth about all sorts from their latest album, We’re Because We’re Here to future plans.
We’re big fans of UK prog metallers, TesseracT. One night, we were out with their guitarist, James Monteith, dousing our insides with whiskey and we thought he had as much crap to say as we do so we asked him if he’d write a column. After we reminded him the next morning afternoon, he agreed again. Here it is. He’s kicking off with explanations, complaints and shit jokes. Class.
Hello, I’m James and I play guitar in prog metal – or as we’re more commonly called – “djent” band Tesseract.
First off, let’s get the djent thing out of the way, which I guess I must address, given the column name. There’s a lot of division in our community of bands and critics about this word, whether it’s: truely representative of the overall sound; a gimmick, or just plain stupid.
As soon as we heard Anathema’ s last record We’re Here Because We’re Here we knew it was going to be a strong contender for Album Of The Year 2010. It’ s not often these days you discover an album that so defiantly establishes itself as an unquestionably flawless slab of musical genius. With rumours that they would be performing this album in its entirety at tonight’s sold-out show, not even a Rob Zombie-sized hangover was going to stop us from being there.