Band: Anachronaeon (Sweden) Album: The Futile Quest for Immortality (2010) Genre: Melodic Death Metal What are the benefits of running a Death Metal site like this particular one? Well, first of all you can get rid of your excess energy and time, should you have some. You get to spread metal, which is a privilege and a duty to any metalhead. You also gain a lot of metal knowledge, get to share it and people value your opinion more (at least on metal matters). But what’s particularly good, and tangible too, is that bands send you their EPs and albums for reviewing and that sometimes you get stuff from not-so-known bands, that you in any case did not know yet, and you wonder why the hell they aren’t opening up for, I dunno, Dimmu Borgir or Amon Amarth or something. By Niek

Well, Anachronaeon is such a band and for them the answer is bloody simple. It’s because Patrik Carlsson and Andreas Åkerlind would both have to grow a few extra pairs of extendible hands. There’s just two guys in this band and that limits ‘em to the studio, which is something the two of them seem to enjoy though, as they do it double: with Anachronaeon for Death Metal and with Eyecult for their black metal cravings.

Anyway, enough jibba-jabba. With Anachronaeon the two stern Swedes have just released The Futile Quest for Immortality. And so that’s now making my speakers all noisy and I’m to give my opinion on the disc. Well, I’ve already given away that it’s good. Extremely pleasant to listen to, despite the fact that it isn’t as crisp as, say, an Opeth or Katatonia album, that’s been mixed by some professional and well-paid studio beast, although to some people that’s in fact a plus because they don’t like their music to be overproduced as fuck.

For melodic Death Metal, this album is not as cheerfully stimulating as many bands in the genre. It’s a lot deeper and darker. More serious. But it ain’t despairing or cruel as many black metal. It seems at peace with itself, finished, complete.

Recurring theme on the album seems to be people living their lives in egocentric ways where “in the end we’ll all become a pile of bones”. Something amply and symbolically illustrated by the ending track, End, closing off with “just a few more breaths to become one with the stream”.

End is a track with a great deal of thrash metal elements, particularly in the intro. But the album also features dark black metal themes and virtuosic soloing on some tracks. It’s interesting to know that the nine tracks on The Futile Quest were written between 2000 and 2008. That’s one track a year on average, which, I imagine, would allow for plenty of creativity and freshness, but also loads of rethinking and adjusting time. Then the whole thing was mixed in 2009 and thrown out for sale in early 2010.

So plenty of time has gone into this album and the patience and care have definitely worked out for the good. The Futile Quest is a great album that has something to tell you in a very musically pleasant manner. Wrapping up, why is this a disc that won’t look bad in your own collection of excellent metal music (after all, your taste is absolute right?!)? Well, it’s incredibly varied, yet as well a whole as a hamburger or something… What I’m trying to say is there’s a load of different ingredients and style elements, making it a very varied dish, but it still tastes as one. A tasty one.

Grade: 8.5/10
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Tags: death, melodeath, melodic, review, Swedish

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 21st, 2010 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.