UMUR "Under a Stone With No Inscription" is the 3rd full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Anata. The album was released through Wicked World Records in January 2004. It´s the successor to "Dreams of Death and Dismay" from 2001. There´s been one lineup change since the predecessor as drummer Robert Petersson has been replaced by Conny Pettersson.

The material on "Under a Stone With No Inscription" is US influenced technical death metal. There are definitely a nod or two towards Morbid Angel here and there, although this is generally much more focused on technical playing and complex song structures than their more famous US influence. It´s quite challenging and highly energetic music, and I used to think the album featured a lot of needless technical noodling, but as I´ve given the album more spins over the years, it has won me over, and what I hear now is a lot of technical playing, but it´s technical playing which is a means to an end.

So there are a lot of strong tracks here (they take time to digest and they aren´t instantly memorable, but patience is rewarded), featuring a massive load of killer riffs, solos, and great technical drumming. The vocals are aggressive snarling growls, which suit the material perfectly, and to top it off "Under a Stone With No Inscription" also features a powerful, clear, and detailed sounding production, which further enhances the impact of the music on the listener. A 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is deserved.

siLLy puPPy ANATA started out in Varberg, Sweden (just south of Gothenburg) all the way back in 1993 when Fredrik Schälin (vocals, guitar), Mattias Svensson (guitar), Martin Sjöstrand (bass), and Robert Petersson (drums) started jamming to their favorite death metal bands and took their sweet time in releasing the two demos “Bury Forever The Garden Of Life” and “Vast Lands Of My Infernal Dominion” but the practice and patience paid off because as the band was honing its chops it successfully caught the attention of the Seasons of the Mist label. By the time the band got to releasing the 1998 debut THE INFERNAL DEPTHS OF HATRED there was a new lineup with Henrik Drake on bass and Andreas Allenmark.

Noted for their brutality and technical inclinations, ANATA’s debut started out as a typical death metal release in the vein of Cryptopsy, Deicide and Dark Tranquility only more bombastic, with faster tempos and a sense of brutality more like Suffocation. The band’s unique stamp was that it implemented C# tuning and created melodic constructs out of dissonant guitar riffs. While sounding rather generic on this first offering, the band exhibited a firm command of the instrumentation with lightning fast riffs that pummel away the senses and with heavy distortion and hints of progressiveness that would mature on future albums although one wouldn’t call this technical by today’s standards especially when side by side by other 1998 landmarks such as Gorguts’ magnum opus “Obscura.”

While creating melodic tracks instead of focusing on the rhythmic patterns that many tech death bands use to construct their labyrinthine progressions, ANATA has been referred to as melodic death metal given that the band emerged near the epicenter of melo-death, the Gothenburg scene where bands like At The Gates, In Flames and Dark Tranquility got the ball rolling. Having played with bands like Rotting Christ, there is a sense of blackened death metal in the mix as well. Overall the tracks contain a plethora of ridiculously fast tempos with incessant dissonant guitar riffs pounding away with the occasional Morbid Angel influenced guitar squeal or two. The musicianship is top notch but overall i find this to be a bit too generic for its own good as the tech death world had evolved significantly by this time.

Particularly impressive is the drumming prowess of Robert Petersson who nails all the blastbeat and jazzified fills like a pro. Fredrik Schälin’s growly vocals offer zero variation as he simply imitates the growly grunts of the past and in the process contributes to the rather stale presentation on display. As far as variation in the music though, there’s enough disparate elements to keep this from being a total waste of time although for those not accustomed to the fastest tempos played in a death metal context, this will probably all sound the same. Overall i’m impressed by the instrumental skills of the musicians involved on THE INFERNAL DEPTHS OF HATRED but the compositional fortitude is clearly lacking as ANATA is simply going through the motions without really placing their own stamp on the world of extreme metal at this point. Still though ANATA are considered one of the more important bands of tech death so the logical place to start is in the beginning and although this debut isn’t the most stellar example of tech death metal, it certainly gets the job done.

UMUR "Dreams of Death and Dismay" is the 2nd full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Anata. The album was released through Season of Mist in April 2001. The band´s debut album "The Infernal Depths Of Hatred (1998)" was to my ears a pretty generic sounding US influenced death metal album. Decent but ultimately too standard to stand out.

On "Dreams of Death and Dismay", Anata pretty much continue where they left off on the debut album. US influenced death metal with a few hints to the more melodic Swedish variant. There´s nothing wrong with the level of musicianship on the album and that´s actually the greatest asset this band has because they have real trouble writing memorable music. Now death metal is per definition very powerful music but there´s a big difference in the way the music is composed and delivered by the leaders and the followers in the genre. The material on "Dreams of Death and Dismay" are generally generic and lack any form of original approach and it´s obvious that Anata belong in the latter catagory of followers. Listening to this album I´m not able to tell that it´s Anata I´m listening to and that´s a real issue in my book. Thousands of bands sound like this. After only a couple of tracks my attention start to wander and that´s always a bad sign.

"Dreams of Death and Dismay" is a very generic sounding death metal release and Anata unfortunately seem content with just playing run of the mill death metal. However as the level of musicianship is high, the sound production is decent, and there´s nothing really offensive on the album (other than the fact that the material are generally pretty bland) a 2.5 star (50%) rating is still deserved.

UMUR "The Infernal Depths Of Hatred" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Anata. The album was released through Season of Mist in 1998.

The music style on the album is pretty regular sounding death metal. Deep growling vocals, brutal downtuned guitars and powerful drumming. Anata is not your regular melodic Swedish death metal act nor are they a Swedish old school death metal act. There are elements of the former style on the album but there are just as many US influenced death metal elements on "The Infernal Depths Of Hatred". That´s US death metal of the more technically well played kind. "The Infernal Depths Of Hatred" features 8 tracks distributed over 42:14 minutes of playing time and while the quality of the output is consistent, very little sticks out as above standard for the genre or as particularly memorable.

The musicianship are decent, but there is little here that´ll make your jaw drop. The sound production is decent too, but again we are dealing with a very standard product and the sound production could definitely have prospered from more power and punch. "The Infernal Depths Of Hatred" is as such not a bad album, but it just doesn´t stand out from the legions of other death metal albums that are released every year. So calling it bad might be wrong, but calling it generic isn´t. Anata would develop their sound and ultimately show a more progressive side of themselves on later albums, and thereby become slightly more interesting than what´s the case here, but this particular album is very standard US influenced death metal delivered without offering anything original. A 2 - 2.5 star (45%) rating is warranted.

UMUR "The Conductor´s Departure" is the 4th full-length studio album by Swedish technical death metal act Anata. The album was released through Wicked World (a subsidary to Earache Records) in June 2006.

The music on the album is technical death metal with enough twists and turns to keep even the most experienced fan of the genre busy. The playing on the album is astonishing to say the least. The sound production is powerful and detailed too so that part of the album is well functioning. If you ask me there´s one major issue with "The Conductor´s Departure" though and it´s a pretty serious issue. The songwriting is patchy. By patchy I mean that the tracks contain multible riffs and sections and tempo- and time signature changes in spades but it´s like there´s no master plan. The riffs succeed each other in an endless stream without leaving and impact and the tracks generally lack memorability and hooks. After the album ends all I can remember is that the band are extremely well playing and that the album is well produced. I can´t remember any of the tracks. Anata are as such original sounding on "The Conductor´s Departure" (which is something they lacked on their first couple of more generic sounding US influenced death metal releases), but being original doesn´t always mean you are able to deliver something that´s catchy and enjoyable to listen to.

One of the things that could have worked well is the way Anata´s two guitarists compliment each other. There are almost no unison playing on the album. At all times the two guitars play different things. The problem is that it sometimes sound like the two guitars are playing the riffs from two different tracks at the same time. It sounds very confusing and when you add to that the almost constant tempo- and time signature changes, the soundscape becomes too busy for it´s own good. We´re talking death metal here and I expect brutality and relentless raw power, but as a consequence of all the twists and turns on this album, the music feel powerless. Add to that a very monotone growling vocal delivery and there´s just very little that´s interesting on "The Conductor´s Departure" besides the impressive technical level of the musicianship. A 2.5 star (50%) rating is warranted.