Killing Joke has always been a slightly neglected formation from among those that had a huge impact on the musical movement both in Britain, native to musicians, and in the North American continental part on the planet Earth. With their work of the early 80s, they made a local revolution in post-punk, showing the true power of this genre, and moreover with completely unexpected inclusions of early industrial and Jamaican dub. The roots of the monstrous sound of Killing Joke have sprouted in the music of such bands as Ministry, Godflesh, Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana; even Metallica did a cover of The Wait from the imperishable debut album of 1980. In short, it is pointless to dispute the influence of Killing Joke on the industrial rock movement and its derivatives, their magnitude is too strong on the music scene, but at the same time it is often critically underestimated.

The musicians themselves, after the bright post-punk 80s, decide to take a course to weigh down the sound, hints of industrial heavy music have already slipped through in the releases of the 90s, and in the noughties with the reunion, the band finally started playing the same industrial metal, whose forefathers they were in fact once in the 80s. And despite the recursive borrowings from the work of the same Ministry, and Jaz Coleman has generally become a local Lemmy in terms of vocals, their music is unmistakably fixed as a Killing Joke.

"Hosannas From the Basements of Hell" is the quintessence of the sound of the band from the noughties. A non-stop dance mash of an hour long, which, due to the repetitivity of the genre, not everyone can withstand in one go, therefore, the best acquaintance with this album will be the first 2 compositions that capture attention from the first seconds with their frenzied energy and primal anger. The whole album will continue to create the impression that it was recorded in the darkest depths of Hell and was revealed to the common people for communion. As for the rest of the hosannas, the oriental and pompous Invocation is a great greeting to the legendary LZ Kashmir, Implosion makes you dance furiously as if in an epileptic fit, the songs following it only strengthen this feeling, and relative calm, catharsis await the listener only on the last composition, Gratitude.

A wonderful album in its expressiveness, form and content. Perhaps some people will be scared off by excessive duration, but when everything is well tailored and designed, will it bother you when listening? The answer to this question, it seems to me, is unambiguous.

When you start talking about what is dear to you and loved to the depths of your heart and soul, it is always difficult to find the right words, epithets, metaphors to describe the feelings and emotions burning inside you. If We're Here Because We're Here stole my heart, used it a little and fed it, and then returned it to its rightful owner, then Weather Systems made this heart its own property.

All the best things start at the very end, and my introduction to Anathema began with the closing Internal Landscapes. I was blown away by how sensual it was, how genuinely sincere, and how the pathos was twisted to the maximum. I delayed my acquaintance with the album itself a little, coming to it gradually. I had already fallen in love with the Untouchable dilogy and the above-mentioned song, but I was afraid to be disappointed sometimes, even though I already knew that Anathema would be serious and lasting with me. And for the first time, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be.

To be honest, the whole Weather Systems is built on the same patterns, both its own and the patterns of the last album. All the songs follow basically the same canons, the same pattern, but that doesn't mean, damn it, that the album is monotonous and bad. I think I was able to see such an elusive feature of this album, as a complete immersion inside myself and inside the band itself, to be precise, inside Danny himself, who again became the author of almost all the songs on the album, only The Storm Before The Calm was written by John Douglas. No wonder Danny himself says that it is difficult for him to listen to Weather Systems, since the lyrics on the album are very personal for the older of Cavanaghs.

The deep emotionality of the release at some point completely conquered me, and I could no longer resist the endless beauty of this almost masterpiece. Neither the extraterrestrial majesty of Untouchable, nor the perfect embodiment of femininity in the person of Lee Douglas and her solo part in Lightning Song, nor the duality of The Storm Before The Calm (for a reason it is so different from the other songs on the album, due to the direct involvement of the drummer already mentioned above), nor the softness and lightness of The Beginning and the End, nor the epic melancholy of Internal Landscapes. Truly, there are no passing compositions for me here, Weather Systems have long, deeply and reliably settled in my heart. This is the best album of Anathema of the new period, which is slightly inferior to Judgment, but by a large margin wins over all other albums. I just don't know what words to choose for this album, these songs, when there is only one endless delight burning in my mouth.

For 7 long years, Anathema did not release anything big and new, but during this period the band held many concerts, which resulted in the reconciliation of Danny and Vinnie, as well as as many as 2 concert DVDs, on one of which, for example, a whole Comfortably Numb was covered. And in 2008, the band released a good acoustic compilation, Hindsight, in which the old hits of the band were transformed in a softer light (although, it would seem, much lighter), especially for Fragile Dreams and Angelica. Well, not about this collection, but about the album, which presented the band in a new, fully formed guise of the apostles of light, love and goodness, and if you are not sick of the combination of these 3 words in one sentence, then most likely, you will definitely have a good relationship with the new Anathema.

From the very first notes of Thin Air and the first lines uttered by Vinnie's gentle voice, you are immersed in this bright, sunny atmosphere, you feel that love is really freedom in time and peace. The meeting with the inevitable is delayed by the restless and nervous, but awesome Summer Night Horizon, which is a kind of light greeting to the beginning of the noughties, and then... the infinitely magical and touching Dreaming Light, my personal favorite, Everything, from which the stingy male tears of happiness strive to spill, the truly angelic song Angels Walk With Us, in which the vocals are performed by the notorious Ville Valo from HIM, and the epic A Simple Mistake with almost the best crescendo in the history of the band. And the overall impression of the album is not at all spoiled by either the frank filler Get Off Get Out, or the slightly delayed instrumental Hindsight, which closes the album (although this will still affect the final score). To tell you the truth, if I were in the guys' shoes, I would have made Universal the final song. Of all the songs of Anathema written by Vinnie, this one is his best work. At its core, it really feels like the final chapter of WHBWH, summing up everything Cavanagh/Douglas have had to say over the past 7 years.

By the way, a remarkable fact: all this splendor was mixed together by the maestro Steven Wilson, known to you all from his work in Porcupine Tree, No-Man, Blackfield and many other bands/projects. We're Here Because We're Here is by all accounts a great album that has already become a lifetime classic among the band's fans. If the guys would get rid of Get Off Get Out – I would give this work an unquestionable top ten or close to it.

A really telling name was chosen for the album by members of Anathema. It was born, by the way, in a conversation between Danny and Duncan Patterson, when they reconciled with each other. As stated by the Cavanagh brothers, at the time they were in a closed confrontation with each other for personal reasons, and this at some point led to the fact that Danny wanted to leave the group. Fortunately, this did not happen, moreover, the third of the Cavanagh brothers returned to the band after a long absence – Jamie, Vinnie's twin brother, who took over as bassist after the departure of Dave Pybus. Nevertheless, the inner state of Danny is absolutely accurately reflected in the new material, which is almost entirely written this time by the eldest of brothers (only Balance is co-written with Vinnie and John Douglas).

I see Natural Disaster as the album that became a kind of point of no return for the band. This LP of the "new" Anathema is unique in that, unlike the subsequent bright and optimistic albums, A Natural Disaster attracts exactly some kind of alienated, slightly gloomy, sad atmosphere. Against this background, the names of the first 2 tracks look very ironic, with such a sign! Although, maybe the band meant exactly the perfect harmony and balance that they finally found on this album.

From the first time I did not understand this album, I honestly admit, and I thought about putting it off until better times. The only thing that attracted me was the unusual Closer, and even then it was unusual because of the very skillful use of the vocoder. Later, however, the beauty of Natural Disaster began to unfold for me like a lotus bud. And here you are already clinging to the soul and pathos of Harmonium, and soulfulness of Are You There? (in which Danny again turns to the topic of losing a loved one), and the piercing aggression and darkness of Pulled Under at 2000 Meters a Second, and the hopelessness of the title song (Lee Douglas finally sings solo!), and the serenity of Flying, and the unexpected instrumental about 11 minutes with a well-chosen title Violence simply amazes with its mixture of the entire sound of the album, where sentimentality and aggression collide with each other and form a kind of yin and yang. By the way, in addition to Vinnie, on this album, Danny himself sings solo on 2 songs at once (Are You There? and Electricity), and what's funny, some reviewers confused the voices of Vinnie and Danny (although objectively they are completely different)!

On Natural Disaster, the band went even further from its musical past, but it adapts some ideas from there and turns them into new, unique things, like, for example, it happened with the aforementioned Pulled Under at 2000 Meters a Second, but the trend remained the same: Anathema continued to modify its musical vector, and it seems that on A Natural Disaster, they finally found the necessary and convenient sound. The verdict is simple: despite a couple of tracks (Balance and Electricity), which in my subjective opinion are rather boring, the album is really great, and I love it almost as much as the previous two.

With that creative vector that Anathema has formed, it was hard to guess which way the band would move on the next release. And so it turned out that the Liverpudlians decided to try to experiment not only with the sound, but also with the format of the material, because they planned to make a concept album, the first in their career. The essence of the concept is the progressive movement of the lyrical hero down the spiral (almost like in Trent Reznor's 1994 masterpiece The Downward Spiral) straight to suicide. Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?

However, do not rely on chewing the meaning and plot from the mouth of Vinnie or anyone else from the group - the canvas of Anathema is cut into unequal pieces, which, with all the desire and perseverance of the listener, will not reveal the true storyline. And band members themselves, it seems, did not fully understand exactly how and in what order to listen to the compositions they wrote; in the 2015 remaster, the intro of A Fine Day, which was thrown out of the original release, is added, which resembles Panic in its nervousness and despair, and the original songs are mixed in a radically different order (for example, the same Panic and the Pressure opening the album are located in the middle of the album). However, I personally prefer to listen to the album in the original order.

And how are things going, actually, with the music? It was just a wonderful alt-prog-rock record. As you know, all the best of 2000' alternative starts with one name – Radiohead. This infection, which I do not like with every fiber of my soul, has turned heads of our Liverpool heroes. Another thing is that I really like the ideas of Radiohead, but the way they implement these ideas, I'm sorry, I can't stand it, and I'd rather listen to the Radiohead-esque album from my favorite Anathema, who made these ideas in the best possible way. By the way, even now this album is often underestimated and not remembered at the mention of the name of Anathema, and I can not even find any explanation for this phenomenon. Although, probably, the matter is in several existing factors, the main of which is that 2 years before A Fine Day to Exit, Judgement was released. The uneasy fate of the successor to the great album also befell A Fine Day to Exit. Moreover, the focus on alt-rock confused even many fans of the band's last 2 albums. And very wrongly, because this album, despite the concept that runs through all the songs as a leitmotif, is full of treasure. These are the first 2 songs, slow Pressure with a haunting chorus and Release with a slight touch of electronica, and wonderful alt-rock Leave No Trace, written by Vinnie, and psychedelic-evil Underworld and Panic, and tragic Barriers (again a duet of Danny Cavanagh and Lee Douglas) and the title song. Anathema also did not forget about the concept itself, and their lyrical hero ends... (?) And then the Liverpudlians cut the story short, leaving it up to us to interpret the end of the album, whether the hero really killed himself in the cold ocean or decided to wait. The answer to this question will be given 16 years later, but this is already another story.

In the end, we have a unique work in the Anathema discography, which is underrated by the fans, but no less beautiful in its melancholy and depressive nature, and I think the band has finally reached maturity on this album. And although between Judgment and A Fine Day to Exit, I would still prefer the former for, let's say, greater ambition and elegance, the feeling that this work did not come from here, A Fine Day to Exit is valuable precisely for the band's attempt to do something extremely separate from the rest of the work and at the same time deeply beautiful.