Anachronaeon
The Ethereal Throne

Swedish duo Anachronaeon has released a quartet of albums to date, I had not heard any of those before I got a mail from Patrik in the band during the ending days of may. Since then I have been listening to the fourth album by these guys, an album that has an amazing album cover which has to be one of the best this year. It also has a concept, which is one about a murderer. For me such concepts are always fascinating, the inner struggle, what drives someone to misdeeds and all of that, the fascination with the darkness in man. One disturbing thing that has nothing to do with the album in itself though was the fact that the guy said that they would be very happy to be reviewed by us, I have some bad experience with bands saying that before being reviewed and then hating me when I have reviewed them negatively. One always has to wonder, is he expecting a positive review? Even so it is safer to do a positive one, but then again I cannot lie if this album sucks I have to say so no matter what he thinks. Anyway, got a bit sidetracked there due to idiots from the past, now lets take a look at what is inside that wonderful cover artwork.

A plastic disc with a silvery underside and some printing on the top, what a surprise. Just kidding though, I never got a CD (cheap bastards using the simple way to promote music today) only musical files and those are of the extreme metal kind. Complex extreme metal with a lot of melodic feel to it, with a lot of dynamics between the light and the dark. The concept is dark and so are the vocals, slow and grumpy they sound. The drums are furious and heavy and does take up a fair bit of real estate in the soundscape. I don’t really like the band’s name, it is a bit too complicated for a regular metal mind but then again it might be to fend off the unrighteous as this is a complicated album that takes a fair bit of attention to fully grasp. Especially if you are looking to understand the lyrics as they are quite hard to make out over the eight chapters that tell the story, the last chapter is an instrumental one. If minutes were pages in a book this novel would be one of little over 43 pages.

Man how I deviate from what I wrote in my Swedish review but that is a the fun of writing two reviews of the same album and you don’t understand what I am on about anyway as you don’t understand Swedish. Still, this album has been debated between my different personalities. One of those really dislikes it due to the vocals being so uninteresting in its slow murky kind of presenting words in a slurring of words kind of way. And neither does it like the drums which takes too much place and becomes annoying. But then we have the liker of the melodies and the complexity of the thing, the guitar lines are often brilliant and the melodies are sometimes to die for. The concept is also told in a way that is rarely exceeded by any band, and this personality thinks that the vocals can be accepted as a minor annoyance and also the drums. After playing this album for over a month I have at least been able to conclude that I don’t particularly like the drums, they are the wrongest thing on this album, they should have been a bit toned down. The vocals may not reflect the psyche of a murderer in the way I want, the inner struggle for instance is nowhere in his voice more of a monotone sort of morphine child with a soar throat but the murderer can be drugged so it can still work. But the melodies and the storytelling are too good to overlook, even though I needed to read the lyrics and about the concept for it to really sink in as it was not completely obvious just by hearing it. It is now though.

So in the end I will have to conclude that The Ethereal Throne is a good album that has introduced me to a band that have decided to listen to their own inner voice rather than emulating something that already has a million clones. Added to that their fourth album has an exciting concept albeit I would have wanted the vocals to really tell the story rather than having to read it in a text file. And despite maybe appearing slightly on a negative side I have to say that I have had a positive first meeting with Anachronaeon, and that their fourth album is worth owning as it has a fantastic cover art if you for some reason doesn’t get along with the music. I wonder if I can get it as a poster to go with the songs...