The band is considered to be the major inspiration and musical foundation for most deathgrind/goregrind bands, played some of the heaviest and goriest death metal around, is considered one of the founding fathers of melodic death metal, and even dabbled in death ‘n’ roll before disbanding. Losing someone close to you will make you feel your emotional extremes, and that’s what Anathema have managed to do in this track.Īlbum: Necroticism – Descanting the InsalubriousĬarcass are a seminal band for all things death. Facing the death of a loved one is never easy, it’s a messy combination of love, laughter, sadness, longing, resentment, and eventual acceptance. I have never heard a single song so perfectly capture something so emotionally complex “Internal Landscapes” is a musical representation of the emotional rollercoaster associated with confronting death. Even if you weren’t listening to the lyrics and were just entranced by Danny Cavanagh’s incredible voice, you can’t help but feel what’s going on. As the song picks up pace, the voices become more emotive, the softness becomes louder, and the entirety of the music continues to crescendo until the song reaches it’s a fever peak before finally, bittersweet-ly, letting go and transitioning to the second half of the audio sample. The intro audio sample transitions beautifully into a predominately acoustic beginning where male and female voices began to trade off lyrics about love, life, and goodbye. “Internal Landscapes” is bookended by audio of a softly spoken man explaining his near death experience and has some of the band’s most haunting, emotionally complex, and powerful music sandwiched in the middle. Indeed, they have many songs about suicide, loss, and the like, but my favorite song that they’ve done about death is actually quite touching and uplifting. Their penchant for gloom is amplified by their lyrical subject matter which for the most part centers around personal struggles, despair, and the darker side of relationships and love. The band plays a deeply emotional and atmospheric flavor of progressive rock that’s oftentimes quite soft and, to be honest, extremely depressing. The three Cavanagh brothers with friends, more commonly known as Anathema, have always been a go-to for me on a rainy day. Let’s also take a moment to acknowledge the spooky lyrics on this song: "Exhumation of a tomb/Evil haunted catacomb/Rotten corpse covered in dust/Drained arteries in rust/Bring a saw, cut off an arm/Necrophilia has its charm/Molestation of the dead/Fucking with a cut-off head." That’s sure to give you a fright this Halloween season!
Amongst the wonderfully macabre collection of songs on this album, “Draped in Cerecloth” stands out for its unrelenting speed, heavily audible riff-tastic bass lines, cacophonous crypt-like production, and soul-shredding shrieks from beyond the grave. Everything from the vocals to the production to the lyrics to the artwork – really every part this album reeks of putrefaction, of rotting crypts, of death itself. Epitome of Darkness might as well be called Epitome of Death.
This is about fuckin’ death! Indeed, if anyone is still reaching for that ugly Christmas sweater, I implore you to listen to any song off of this album first. But all of this nostalgia and warm-and-fuzzy feelings are making us think of the wrong holiday.
The blistering and decrepit death-thrash on this record sounds right at home with the likes of Morbid, Nihilist, Merciless, and Treblinka – really any of the gods of the demo-days of the early Swedish death metal scene before the Sunlight sound started to dominate.
TWISTED INSANE FLOORBOARDS LYRICS FULL
Their one and only full length album, Epitome of Darkness, was released in 2006, but sonically doesn’t sound older than 1989. Sweden’s Repugnant makes us all yearn for the death metal of yesteryear.