Anathema hails from Liverpool much like a few other notable bands. They started out as no-nonsense doom-metal act, and upon the departure of their growling singer Darren White, guitarist Vincent Cavanagh took the mic and the band began a slow transformation into what they are today. With each successive release the band has stepped slightly further away from the metal fury into atmospheres of texture and experimentation. Anathema is still a goth act, particularly if you scrutinize their agonizingly nihilist lyrics, but with A Natural Disaster, Anathema has stepped into musical territory, though still metallic, shares more in common with the soundscape of Kid A-esque Radiohead, Pink Floyd (there are a lot of nods to Roger Waters) as well as the Keyboard turf associated with everyone from early Genesis and Yes to Vangelis.

Anathema's transformation over the past decade is one of the most interesting in recent memory, as album after album has sounded more and more melodic and progressive, and brought to a fine point by the unique singing voice of Cavanagh. 2001's A Fine Day to Exit, found the band practically shedding it's goth leanings altogether in favor of a more poppy trappings (complete with Coldplay/Starsailor harmonies on songs like "Release" and "Pressure." Yet they managed to do so while still rocking with a dark and brooding edge.

Now, more than two years later, comes A Natural Disaster, and it does not disappoint. The new record finds Anathema building on the sound of A Fine Day to Exit, delving into more ethereal terrain with moments that approach a kind of dark reverie. And yet it's still metal and heavy and as lyrically bleak as ever. Most amazingly they are able to carry all this off with only occasionally sounding pretentious. It's an album that is very much alive (even in it's obvious derivations) it's not some sort of prog-rock retread. Each song is a new surprise and stands on the shoulders of the previous track, almost like "look what else we can do." It's a great headphone listen, sort of the equivalent of putting on Sinatra for a night of romance for headbangers.

The majority of the songs here are lengthy and evolve slowly (if I ever saw these guys live, I'd insist on sitting). There's only one track that would move one to stand up and pound a horned fist with any sort of fury. "Pulled Under at 2000 Meters Per Second", smacks of Roger Waters' bass on Pink Floyd's "One of These Days." After Vincent rasps a verse or two, the song unexpectedly goes off at a double-barrel metal ferocity with frenzied drumming that do not let up for the duration, the song culminates with the screamed lines, "Freedom is only a hallucination / That waits at the edge of the places you go when you dream / Deep in the reason betrayal of feeling". This song has an almost pure punk edge at times that serves as a reminder that Anathema are still capable of pure Maelstrom.

Natural Disaster finds Anathema adding two new members, keyboardist Les Smith and bassist Jamie Cavanagh (brother of Vincent and guitarist/songwriter Danny), and though the textures and ideas here run deep and in various directions they're always simple and gain their strength from repetition and gradual instrumental embellishment. As I lay and listened to it, I couldn't help but think of this record as "mood music" for people in bad moods.
For a newcomer to the new Anathema the first track "Harmonium" is a little misleading. The instrumentation is unmistakably metallic and bears a fair comparison to Tool. The vocal has the same trancelike durge - "These days my hands are tied / These days I think you'll find / I'm not me now a light has died / Its too real to run and hide." The opener climaxes in a cacophony of layered distortion and an undulating bass line.

The insistent drum beat and electric piano of "Balance" reminds a bit of Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place," but Anathema isn't interested so much in Radiohead as they are in the bands that inspired them. Those mentioned above that so often take an unwarranted savaging at the hands of unenlightened critics who find it fashionable to prog-bash. "Until death's mirror reflects / The meaning of our lives / We wander aimless and mesmerized / As the fear starts to rise". Next comes "Closer," another keyboard-driven track, as a vocoder-tweaked voice comes in, its muffled cries of, "Your dream world is a very scary place to be trapped inside", perfectly illustrating the claustrophobic feel of the song, as the intensity grows steadily for nearly five minutes. The title of this one is, of course, an intentional nod to another obvious influence Trent Reznor.

The exquisitely quiet title track features the guest vocals of female singer Lee Douglas, who sounds so much like Beth Gibbons of Portishead that I at once checked the liner notes. A Natural Disaster serves as sort of a female parallel unverse, and a perfect response to the rabid male intensity of the previous track, while in it's own way, just as emotionally raw.

I'm sure there are plenty of the band's earlier fans that have fallen by the way as Anathema has continually eschewed their death metal beginnings. But I think this is an exciting band that bends genres into an expansive, gripping, and all-encompassing rock sound.