Anathema - Weather Systems review

Year : 2012
Genre : Walt Disney Lion King Rock
Label : KSCope (EU) The End Records (US)
Origin : United Kingdom
Rating : 3.0 / 10

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Anathema's latest sounds to be the direct spiritual continuation of 2010's We're Here Because We're Here. I want to tell you right off the bat that the record, in my opinion is highly annoying and contains perplexingly narcissistic music. Anathema seems to have constructed an in-house song generator that is capable to produce smarmy songs, exclusively, as every single piece on this 55 minute affair exhibits the same premiere core characteristics and compositional tactics. I will get into those traits with ruthless efficiency later on. The disc shows constant preoccupation with the establishment of compulsive discomfort-elimination. This Anathema record is here to make you feel OH!, so special, you cosmic schmuck. Luckily, the cosmic schmuck who is writing this, warns you about this dangerous fact. Listen to this music, but know that it is a fragile lie and is designed to make you feel : - surprise! - ssssssssssssssspecial. But "you" are not special, "you" are "only" the expression of an unrelenting process beside an infinite number of other ones, and only this process that gives you the capacity to delude yourself into such ridiculous notions, IS special. It is consciousness medium, looking for lower entropy states. As for Anathema, they are looking for money for assuaging your fears. (Which is the same thing in a physical universe, funnily enough.)


In Anathema's domain, the only bird is the swan and the three colors that are most fervently encouraged to be used by everyone are blue and white and green. Your wasp is not allowed. Boosh! Boosh! Yellow, black, evil, stingy, evil! Boosh! Boosh! This is relentless Nazi music in the sense that it is arrogant enough to assume that the listener is retarded enough to not be aware of the fact the she/he is being fed the same daaaaayuuuumn trick for the 32423423rd time. This is Nazi music because it wants everything to be OH!, so peaceful and OH!, so eloquently and pretty much disgustingly and homogeneously beautiful. Like those posters with the dolphins and the naked ladies and the sunrise from the early '90s. Your receptors are in a constant harassment to submit to the limited/fabricated toy-beauty the songs actually reflect. Their capacity to entertain is vastly constrained by a self-congratulatory artistic behavior and related techniques that the music is forced to vomit out sugar-overdose accessibility for. This is an attempt to commit the slaughter of beautiful music. I adore beautiful music, I "only" demand it to be made from heart to heart, as this Cynic release sounds to me as. This is not the case at all with this baby, designed to sell good in the family friendly section of the record store, right next to Disney's Lion King. You are expected to be affected and be satisfied by very cheap and predictable patterns and methodologies. Read on to find out more about this vastly predictable pink plush toy music that secretly sucks immense demonic alligator dick in putrid anxiety-hell when you are not watching.


This release is relevantly sorrowful and kind of tolling to the core to tolerate once you are accustomed to its silly little cardboard tricks it relies on and hasty to showcase the full set it possesses of. The Anathmema song structure reeks Lion King Walt Disney rock music, only with more saliva, sugar and slime. The chord passages never change in anatomy, they always give you these semi-bloated wall of sound structures, amidst which you will be shot through by a giant sling, and : LOOK! there are pretty thoughts and percepts around you in the sky to comfort you for your money. It's a trade, yes? The vocal contribution is even more annoying than the vastly limited music lingo is. The Anathama singers do the following, almost always : they create a guitar arpeggio in the tradition of peaceful retirement home music - this is the max intensity encouraged to be used therein with safety - aaand then !!

And then comes to stretched-out vocal belting. No exception. I encourage you to test this notion of mine. Every single song on this delivery is based on the same-, highly annoying and self-indulgent "idea" of belting out a loooong-long note to the harmonic backdrop structures.

Look, I loooooooooooooooooooooooove to bath in my vooooooooooooooooooice, mom.

The more stretched the note is, the better the Anathema siblings seem to feel about their music. Check out track 7, "The Beginning and The End" for a horrifying example of the effect I'm describing to you. By that time, you are taken for such a sedated sloth of a spiritual construct that the singer seeks to serve out your comfort-needs with two impertinent stretched out notes in one single idea. Oh my fucking God. The more stretched the note, the more the Anathema siblings think that they have successfully served out your stock-needs for emotional comfort. Yes, they LOVE to bath in their voices. I'm not a mean person, by the way. My heart is butter, my intent is to contribute. I'll give proper hell to impertinent doom. I just demand exigency and spiritual hygiene and I won't submit to threshold level toy-beauty cultivation that is not worth taking a decent shit on.

This by far is the most annoying, smarmy-ass and dishonest release I have encountered since Modern Talking tribute bands, and I admit that it is superbly constructed at that. I admit I found the Anathema song "Energy" an interesting one from their previous out, and the problem is this : Anathema simply got stuck in this marshmallow feelgood-belief system of said track, which, I think might have become a "Sacred Prison" for them no member of the group is allowed to point out or acknowledge, and they project their deluded-ass pink-balloon cake-music from there ever since. Disturbing, demonic shit. If you want to torture me, give the tracks of this camelsnot LP with 1 minute intervals of silence between them, so I can suffer through legendarily during this minute with the horrid memory of the previous piece. Homo music, - no, I'm not homophobic and I love the music of Jimmy Sommerville, and demand the right to use the word "homo" nevertheless to describe this LP, because I feel it is the precise word to tag this insult with - but the best at that without a doubt.

Rating : 3.0 / 10

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