Found this on
http://www.clonemetal.dk/index.html and translated it. Had to do sone translation exercise anyway for school, was either this or some assignments my teacher wasn't gonna spend much time correcting anyways, thought this at least had a glimpse of purpouse, here you go.
"Anathema is by no means a new band. This is the 7th album from the band, which started out as part of the doom metal underground, known as one of the big three of british Doom-metal in the early 90s, the 2 others being PL and MDB. Through the last decade the band underwent drastic changes, away from the dead heavy and slow doom metal toward a sound mostly inspired by Pink Floyd. Following the amazing, but in many ways slightly odd "A4", co-songwriter and bassist Duncan Patterson left the band (he later resurfaced with Antimatter). The follow-up "Judgement" was still great, but then the band staggered a bit with "A Fine Day To Exit" from 2001, which seemed an attempt to achieve broad recognition by including inspiration from modern emotional rockbands as Radiohead. Following that album, the line-up has underwent further changes, newcomer bassist Dave Pybus has been replaced by the third Cavanagh brother Jamie, leaving the band looking as almost a pure family business. Due in part to this, it's not without relief, I conclude that "A Natural Disaster" shows a band, which seems to have found itself, though they haven't completely abandoned their newer musical references.
The album starts off calmly with "Harmonium", which builds up with keyboards, guitar harmonies and echoing drums, before a heavier guitar riff breaks in and carries the mid section of the song, which ends as it started. This is followed by 3 of the best tracks on the album, "Balance" is built up by Radiohead-ish synths until a heavy, rocking and tearing crescendo takes over leading the song into "Closer", which is a dreamish spaced out thingy with vocoder vocals. Danny Cavanagh sings "Are You There?", taking over from Vincent, and his unsure and fragile voice fits this very "Floydian" track, which is a real highlight of the album, perfectly. After a short intermezzo of samppled children's voices and ghostly piano, the second half of the album kicks off with Pulled Under at 2000 Meters a Second, an uptempo rocker in the same style, but better than, "Panic" from "AFDTE", still showing this isn't where the band has its strength. Lee Douglas sings the title track, it's not the first time she offers her fine female vocals to Anathema tracks, and she does a fine job here as well. Flying and Electricity, the lattter being sung by Daniel, brings a bit of Coldplay inspiration into the equation, before the album is closed by a 10 minute instrumental "Violence", which begins softly before escalating to a rocking climax, which is then subdued again and dies out with a few piano chords.
In spite of a few too obvious references to other bands, the album shows that Anathema is a band, which slowly, but surely, delicates their very own form of emotional, melancholic rock, realising it does noone any good to comprimise one's own musical ideas in the hunt for that broader recognition, which is so hard to get for a band stigmatised by a past in the metal underground."
I have only one remark, Coldplay?
