Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here (The End Records/KScope Music) By: Justin Donnelly

[9.5/10] It’s hard to believe it’s been seven long years since Anathema last offered up some new music. Yes, fans have been blessed with a couple of DVDs in that time (2004’s Were You There? and 2006’s A Moment In Time) and an album’s worth of reworked and rerecorded material (2008’s Hindsight). But technically, the long running Liverpool (U.K.) act hasn’t recorded anything remotely new since 2003’s A Natural Disaster.

Anathema finally broken their self imposed silence with the release of their eighth full-length release We’re Here Because We’re Here. And quite simply, the seven years work the band have put into their latest album has been well worth the wait.

In a lot of ways, We’re Here Because We’re Here is the next logical and natural progression from where Anathema last left listeners all those years ago. The band has well and truly matured as performers and songwriters in their time away, which is more than evident in the ten selections presented on their latest album.

The opening track “Thin Air” is a perfect example of where Anathema has mastered the art of dynamics with an ever increasing layer of textures within their chosen progressive sound. Vincent Cavanagh’s vocals have certainly come a long way, with his performance sounding nothing short of stunning, while the song’s progressive build up, breakdown around the halfway mark and concluding with a climax that is on first listen quite complex, yet deceptively simple, beautifully written and masterfully executed.

The tension filled “Summernight Horizon” is every bit as impressive with the addition of piano, driving drums and Lee Douglas’ ever present harmonized vocals alongside Cavanagh’s throughout the song, while the emotive piano driven/strings enhanced “Dreaming Light” is quite possibly the strongest ballad Anathema has penned to date.A strong Porcupine Tree influence can be heard within the piano led “Everything,” which is not surprising given that Steve Wilson is credited as mixer for the album. But despite the sound influence, “Everything” is still an amazing, catchy and beautiful tuned that it’s unmistakably from the likes of Anathema.

The soothing “Angels Walk Among Us” (which eventually concludes with the Cavanagh spoken word follow up track “Presence”) follows a similar path to the former, while “A Simple Mistake” ebbs and flows throughout its lengthy running time, with the varied layering of vocals carrying the first half of the song, before injecting a heavier guitar presence in its place in the latter half of the track.

“Get Off, Get Out” is by far the album’s heaviest tracks with its weighty guitar tones, driving rhythms and prominent Porcupine Tree-like chorus, while the slower paced/Pink Floyd-like “Universal” drifts along the same theme in the musical sense, before making a transition toward its tail end. Finishing up the album is the lengthy instrumental piece “Hindsight”, which in ways that that are a little hard to describe, seem to reinforce the overall positive feel and outlook of the album, both lyrically and musically.

In hindsight, both A Fine Day To Exit (2001) and A Natural Disaster are precursors to what the band really wanted to achieve with We’re Here Because We’re Here. Both are great albums, but definitely experimental efforts that have helped the band take things to a whole new level on this album.

Anathema has released some truly mesmerizing albums in their 20 years together, and even a couple of classics. But in the here and now, We’re Here Because We’re Here is undoubtedly their strongest and most satisfying release in the last decade, and an album that will definitely make its way into my top ten albums list for 2010.

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