Anathema Album: “Resonance, Vol. 2 [Bonus Track]”

Spreading their Anathema retrospective package over two CDs, Peaceville now offers the relatively caustic, loud, fatalistic and/or doomy side of this rapidly transmorphing band of volatile mopesters. The album is quite shocking in presenting this radical yet gradual shift, beginning with tracks from the Serenades debut, lurching doomfests that place the band somewhere between My Dying Bride and Cathedral. As we progress, Anathema's line-up shatters and creative fisticuffs ensue, the music being the outcome of fierce songwriting battles. First productions improve, and then arrangements and vocals, in tandem, get cleaner, more Floydian and er, alternative, producing inCure-ables like 'Fragile Dreams' and 'Empty'. Underscoring the transformation that has taken place, the album closes (before a final video track for 'Mine Is Yours') with early EP sledge(s) 'Nailed To The Cross'/'666' which demonstrates the band's ability to keep just the right side of chaos, turning in a punky, antisocial soundcheck-ish style smudge of nothingness that informs and warns the listener that art is at hand, to expect twists and turns, to expect these guys, plagued by demons, to follow a number of unpredictable and erratic muses.