Review by Wanda Hill
Sixty minutes of floating on beautiful melodies, intense emotion and powerful composition can be yours when you decide to listen to Distant Satellites – Anathema’s 10th studio album. This UK progressive rock band have carved their own unique blend of uplifting yet contemplative music that continues to inspire and attract new fans around the world. Their style has grown to embrace new influences while never really straying far from original inspirational sources such as Pink Floyd.
Distant Satellites features ten beautifully crafted songs that explore a range of states of being and experiences using sublime instrumentation, harmonies and vibrant vocals. The song’s transition well from one to another, providing continuity and an extremely pleasurable listening hour.
This album is very strong vocally with both Vincent Cavanagh and Lee Douglas sharing the lead vocal title and also providing harmonies for each other. Both convey a lot of passion and energy with their voices allowing the listener to be easily transported into their feelings. The switch between male and female vocals, adds to the depth of emotion Anathema capture and share with this album.
As always the stunning guitar (Daniel Cavanagh) and piano (Daniel Cardoso) lines lead most of the compositions, and work perfectly together to move the intensity of the music up and down. The bass (Jamie Cavanagh) and percussion (John Douglas) follow suit complementing, and accenting the pace and emotion.
The title track on the album is more percussion focused than any of the other tracks and has an electronica feel to it. It’s a gentle foray into this sphere of music and won’t alienate any die hard progressive rock enthusiasts, as all the atmospherics remain true to the overall quality of the album.
Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) has provided masterful orchestral arrangements for the album, that really bring this work to life. Cementing the ambiance and creating the all encompassing embrace of harmonious frequencies that only a solid string section can provide.
Christer-André Cederberg has done a brilliant job of recording and mixing this album at Cederburg studios in Norway. Distant Satellites is a very satisfying album to listen to and rates up there with other awesome offerings from Anathema such as A Fine Day to Exit, Judgement and A Natural Disaster that I really enjoyed from the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
Anathema’s Distant Satellites is due for release on June 9, 2014.
Australian lovers of Anathema have been waiting for the band to tour here since 1990 when the band first formed playing in various metal oriented genres. 2014 is the year Anathema will finally grace our shores with three shows in August.
Tour details at lifemusicmedia.com/anathema-announce-australian-tour-august-2014/
www.metropolistouring.com
