Review: Anathema, Marble Factory

Last time Alcest played this venue, they comprehensively blew away boring headliners Mono. The French quartet face a tougher challenge tonight, especially as they’re obliged to go on at 6:55pm to accommodate the headliner’s mammoth performance. And unlike Anathema, who are finally beginning to reach the vast potential audience for their increasingly accessible music, the hairy Frenchmen show no interest in altering their style – even though it was suggested a while back that they’d be dropping the black metal influences and harsh vocals altogether. Indeed, Oiseaux de Proie from current album Kodama is as heavy as anything they’ve recorded, but also benefits from the dreamy quality that makes their music so unique.

Backlit and shrouded in fog throughout as usual, they play a career-spanning set in which the lovely Autre Temps remains a highlight – imagine a black metal band playing an acid folk song and you’re halfway there.

Gangly, impeccably polite frontman Neige thanks us all for coming before leaving us with that gorgeous, slowburning epic Délivrance, whose multi-part vocals create a choral effect that’s oddly reminiscent of early Popol Vuh.

Speaking of Krautrock, few bands use a Tangerine Dream intro tape these days. Fewer still play along with it. Daniel, the chattiest of Anathema’s trio of founding Cavanagh siblings, ambles on in darkness and begins to noodle away with Love on a Real Train (you’ll recognise it from a zillion film soundtracks, including Risky Business, Ben Wheatley’s High Rise and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale). This cheekily segues into San Francisco, which bears an obvious TD influence, and both parts of Untouchable, showcasing the full power of all three main vocalists – Daniel, his brother Vincent, and Lee Douglas, who has gone from being a guest singer to taking an increasingly central role in Anathema’s music.

Rammed to the rafters, this is Anathema’s biggest ever show in Bristol (they last played aboard the Thekla) and they’re clearly on a roll, having deservedly just bagged the Album of the Year gong for The Optimist at the Prog Awards while enjoying a steady upward career trajectory in Steven Wilson’s slipstream. Many in this all-ages audience who’ve somehow found their way here weren’t even born when the band was formed back in the early ’90s, which means they have eleven albums to catch up on.

Much of The Optimist is aired in this two-hour set, including the title track with that perfectly timed sample of Michael Shannon’s rant from Take Shelter, augmented by stylish, mood-setting films projected onto a screen at the back of the stage. A mid-set triptych of Anathema’s most beautiful songs – Thin Air, Lightning Song and Dreaming Light (“The best thing we’ve written,” reckons Daniel) – gives way to the epic Floydian grandeur of The Beginning and the End, the slowburning Universal and vocoder-showcasing Closer.

A lengthy encore brings the percussive electronica of Distant Satellites, with vocals pitched somewhere between Donna Summer’s I Feel Love and Christine McVie’s Songbird, underlining that this is a band who refuse to be constrained by genre. Only then do they return to their earlier, somewhat heavier material from Alternative 4, which goes down a treat with old-skool fans – as well as Floyd enthusiasts, thanks to that teasing Shine On You Crazy Diamond intro. Unexpectedly, just as we think it’s all over, Daniel and Lee come back for a swift rendition of Glory Box, as recorded by that lot from up the road. A magnificent show from the best band to come out of Liverpool since the Fabs.

All photos by Mike Evans