Anathema — A Fine Day To Exit

These days it seems quite common for a metal band to change their musical direction. Anathema for instance started as a doom-metal band, but over the years they slightly progressed outside the metal borders. In the early days you could not imagine a band like Iron Maiden exchanging their galloping riffs for Pink Floyd esque melodies. Now it's quite common, a black-metal band like Ulver are now exploring the bounderies of electronic music. Some bands do it quite succesfully, some don't. Paradise Lost lost track on their last album Believe In Nothing, but fellow ex-doom-metal collegues Anathema are doing quite well. They released their best album in 1999 with Judgement.

Now recently the follow-up to Judgement was released, A Fine Day To Exit. An album where Anathema take their music even a step further. Their metal past is buried and what we get is a damn fine progressive rock album. Influences range from Radiohead (OK Computer) to Porcupine Tree to Jeff Buckley.

A Fine Day To Exit has a lighter feel then their past albums. The songs breathe because of the use of more acoustic guitars and piano. They also use small electronic touches, for instance on album opener Pressure. With Release Anathema released their best song, one that builts up perfectly. The vocals from Vincent Cavanagh are great. I can still remember me disliking his voice on Eternity, but he improved a lot over the last couple of years. With Leave No Trace Anathema borrowed influences from a prog-rock act like Anekdoten, while Panic is a short punky rocksong like Therapy? used to make them.

A Fine Day To Exit is a great follow-up to Judgement. This is an album where Anathema take a left turn, but keep their solid songwriting. Except for one or two tracks, I really enjoy this album, and I'm looking forward to their next output. A Fine Day To Exit might not beat my favourite Judgement, but it's still a solid disc. Let's hope the troubles in this band get resolved soon, and they continue to write albums like this.