Anathema - Eternity (1996)

This is pretty much the final album to showcase any semblance of doom and that's pretty much all you'll get... a mere semblance. Now, I actually happen to like this album very much but it's also a bit of a bummer that they didn't continue in the vein of what I consider to be their masterpiece, 'The Silent Enigma'. That album, I thought, managed to perfectly balance the more emotional aspects of the band's sound along with the weightier doom aesthetics of their earlier works. Obviously the band (in their minds) were "maturing" musically and felt perhaps that the metallic trappings of their sound were just that. A hindrance, if you will.

Whatever the case, 'Eternity' is a decidedly mellower trip into the band's emotional landscape and whereas I might have felt that this album sucked in an earlier state of mind, it's the band's stellar songwriting and wise selection of riffs and arrangements that eventually stays my wicked hand, and again, there are a few colossal slabs of doom left here and there as if the band were unsure of themselves and needed a security blanket from the past to cling onto as they traversed this brave new world of theirs. While I'm sure many would disagree, I will go so far as to say that 'Eternity' is Anathema's final "doom" album. Everything after this is an attempt at being the next "important" thing such as Coldplay, Radiohead and U2. Barf.