FALLING DEEPER

After the release of the album "Hindsight" which was an unplugged rendering of previously released material, Anathema fans wanted to know why there wasn't much in the way of representative music from the doom metal albums. "Falling Deeper" was the response to this. The tracks on this album are all orchestral renderings of select songs from the doom metal albums. Most of the songs are led by a piano and some mostly ambient vocals which in most cases do not repeat most of the lyrics from those songs. These are beautiful renderings done with a lot of flourish. But they can tend to come across as quickly composed and arranged. Most of the tracks are just way too short and rushed making them seem underdeveloped. The songs are just not given a fitting tribute and, even though I do think it's a great idea to orchestrate doom metal songs to symphonic songs, I feel the originals are just not given the justice they deserve.

However, it's not a complete disaster here. Like I said, the orchestrations are beautiful. "Sunset of Age" is a well composed and arranged piece with more vocals than the other tracks and the orchestra is given a chance to really develop this version of the song into a piece of it's own. There is also a very nice guitar solo played with the orchestra. The song has been given time to breath and take on a new life. "Everawake" is fronted more by an acoustic guitar and is a welcome variation from the symphonic sounds. This song is also headed by the female vocalist Anneke van Viersbergen who has worked with Ayreon, Devin Townsend, Within Temptation and many other bands. There is more a beautiful piano interlude on "I Made a Promise" that tends to take the rushed feeling of the album down to more relaxed feel. Anneke also sings lead on "Alone" which is also the only other track besided "Sunset of Age" over 7 minutes. The longer songs are so much better because the tracks seem so much more developed. With the overall album only being about 37 minutes, they certainly had more time to develop these versions better. Unfortunately, Anneke is underutilized on this track, but the track has a much better ambiance with the addition of acoustic guitar and spacey keyboards. There is a nice use of dissonance on this one too, where as the other tracks are just much to clean.

As much as I love Anathema's music, and as much as I would love for this album to work, there are only two really great songs here in "Sunset" and "Alone". These I would consider progressive, not just because they are longer tracks, but because they are better developed and go beyond just being symphonic. The rest of the tracks have a highlight here and there, but do not use enough of the lyrics from the originals and are too short to really be taken very seriously. They just are not given enough time to breathe and the music just seems too rushed. Unfortunately, I can only give this a 3 star rating, but it is a nice listen on occasion, but it's not something I put on very often.