Coming at you a little later than usual for a Thursday. But, ya know, being Thursday and all, it’s time for the inevitable Throwback. Now, this is a special Thursday, with tomorrow being Independence Day and all, so why not celebrate that idea with a band that is from Not-America?! Specifically, we’ll be looking back at the Liverpool, England based prog rockers, Anathema.

This is a clip from Were You There? (A not-so-clever take on the song ‘Are You There?’ off of A Natural Disaster). This video came out November 15, 2004 and featured some pretty awesome footage. But specifically, I want to share ‘Pulled Under At 2000 Meters Per Second’:

This is quite possibly my favorite Anathema track… ever. It’s powerful, it’s layered, it’s builds on itself in a very epic way. And frankly, they haven’t written anything this heavy since. Furthermore, I’m not the most optimistic in regards to being able to see this song live at any point (even though they did play tracks off this album when I saw them last year at The Gramercy Theater in NYC).

Really though, the inspiration for this came from my recent purchase of their latest release, Distant Satellites. While it is definitely a solid album, it falls right in line with Weather Systems and We’re Here Because We’re Here almost too much. It’s a nice sound, but the variety of sounds and levels of weight that were put forth on A Natural Disaster was some kind of incredible.

All the same, this band has always done well by me and I can’t really question what they do. This is their pinnacle for me so I encourage you to take and listen and then not compare this to anything released since then. It won’t really make sense. Anyway, happy Throwback everyone. Stay tuned for Quickies coming a little later.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”

– Corey

Live. Love. Plow. Horns Up.