An Iliad of Woes

This release essentially shows death/doom in its infancy. Although the band would go on to produce mandatory listening for the genre and then veer off to explore different paths, the most interesting thing about this demo by far is it's historical significance in the development of it's genre. Removed from that, it's somewhat of an underwhelming listen. The production is very raw, drowning out much of what is going on. The leads are absolutely the best thing about this, being the easiest to make out and by far the most well done thing on the demo.

Musically, this falls more prominently under the death metal side of things, much more so than on their later doom/death recordings before they moved on to more accessible pastures. The production is extremely coarse, obfuscating the less pronounced riffs and making the songwriting very hard to pick out. Instrumentally, the musicians are obviously well enough adept, it's solely the production that drags this down. Although poor production certainly works in some cases with extreme metal, here it really hampers what they're going for. The drums are much more furious than on later releases, sometimes coming close to blasting. The coarse growls are also much more aggressive than fans only familiar with their post-demo phase work might expect.

The leads are what stand out as most distinct and refined. Their levels of success are not so much hindered by poor production values. Slow, brooding melodies often add emotion to the raw, crawling death metal. Faster leads tread the middle ground between melancholic and blazing territory. These erupt over the swamp of shitty production, providing something far less messy to latch on to. Without these the demo would be almost an absolutely worthless listen, despite the push towards something new.

This release makes it obvious where Anathema want to go, they just don't yet have the means to turn idea into action. This being part of the dawning of death/doom is by far the most interesting thing about it. Despite these underwhelming beginnings they progressed quickly - Silent Enigma was released a mere five years later, which is an album that is absolutely essential listening for the genre. This can only really be recommended to die hard fans and those wishing to delve into the beginning of the style. It's not an absolute abomination or complete artistic failure by any means, but its replay value is not a high one.

Anathema is one of those often overlooked bands when it comes to important bands who have written musical history. Since it has already been 21 years since they have put out their first release, that being their 1990 demo "An Iliad of Woes", I doubt that they will be remembered as one of the more inspired bands out there in the early 90s that brought a new tone into heavy music as we know it. I also sincerely doubt that their earlier material will reach a certain elevated cult status, out of a number of reasons really, one of them simply being the magnitude of other music out there leading to the fact that hardly anyone takes their time to listen to the true gems of creativity and innovation.

With all of that said, Anathema's early demo work is some incredible music per se, that is, when speaking of extreme music. With the popularity of death metal at that time it's no wonder that new and aspiring bands who wanted to sound heavy adopted this coarse and rough sound and mixed it with whatever ideas they had. In Anathema's case, we have a lot of fresh sounding vibes that death metal did not have at the time. Together with their fellow countrymen from Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, Anathema actually created a whole new form or blend of death metal with traditional doom, one that wasn't present before. Their distinctive style is in tradition of early 70s doom à la legendary Black Sabbath, but with such a dirty and evil tune in their riffing that it takes gloom to a whole new level. You also have your typical fast paced, balls-out death metal riffing and grunting. The guitar tone still remains fuzzy, as in doom, but overlayed with a heavy distortion that creates a newer more fierce atmosphere. The song structure is fairly complex from what I can tell, meaning that there are a lot of weird parts in there that sound simply amazing when put together, sound coherent and overall dreadful unlike in many progressive acts that piece together single parts and try desperately to create some sort of overall presence. The quality on this tape is fair to say at best, since every instrument here sounds muffled in some sort of way; the guitars are the most audible in the mix, as the drums and vocals are pretty chocked down and little bass is audible, even if you turn the sucker up to the max, you get a pretty mushy mix.

Anathema's most early material clearly is very heavy on the death metal side and if you've heard a little older stuff from them but not the demos you will realize that they still had a little polishing to do to find their sound. I recommend picking this one up wherever you can get it and give it a few listens together with their other early demos, you won't be disappointed if you don't mind a pretty rough demo that co-started this whole new distinctive sound.

We all should know what Anathema has become during the last decade or so, and many are undoubtedly also familiar with their early albums. In retrospect, ‘An Iliad of Woes’ is therefore an interesting release; one might expect to hear the beginning of something spectacular. However, as much as I would want to like this demo, I have to say I don't. Well, not much anyway.

To a large degree, Anathema here is still a band looking for its sound; the bass-heavy low-to-mid-tempo riffing found on their early albums is already there, but they also incorporate faster parts more often heard in “normal” death metal. This is, of course, hardly surprising since we are talking about their first ever release. A similar approach can be heard on the early works of their well-known peers, My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost. But I was more than a little surprised to actually hear some traces of what the band was to become. Not necessarily referring to their most recent material, but a slight prog-influence in songwriting is definitely there to be heard.

Not surprisingly, the production is terrible. Or better said, I doubt it very much if any post-production was done at all. I have absolutely no idea how this was recorded, but from what it sounds like, we might be dealing with a live rehearsal (or close to one) using not very many microphones. But keeping in mind that the year was 1990, the sound is certainly not worse than on any other demo of the period. Back then, quality production on a demo was a rarity (and this is an understatement).

To sum things up, ‘An Iliad of Woes’ shows a band with clear potential to write good music, but not yet possessing the means to do so. If any fans of modern-day Anathema can get their hands on this, I can pretty much promise an enlightening listen.