It's not often i'll post about another groups music here, but Anathema has come out with a new album recently entitled "We're here because we're here" and I have to say the album is truly superb and has been getting a good deal of repeat listens on my playlist. Even more interesting to me is that I just found out that Steven Wilson (of Porcupine Tree) was involved in the production and mixing of this album, and you can clearly hear his hand in it. It's a brilliant mix of progressive rock elements, ambient and some orchestration with a ton of great harmonic layering. It's also great to see that a lot of thought was obviously put into the arrangement of the tracks, with many either seamlessly flowing into each other or otherwise sounding connected when listened to as a linear whole that really made the album sound organic and stand out to me (this has become a bit of a lost art in these ipod centric days, it seems).

I've been a long time fan of Anathema, from their early doom metal days to their current prog rock incarnation, and their progression has been brilliant all the way through, and it fascinates me to no end that after nearly 20 years of playing together and producing music, they can still release an album like this, that is so different and so fresh sounding, but maintaining all the things that has made them great all these years.

If you're a fan of any sort of progressive rock, you owe it to your self to check out Anathemas new album, it really is a beautiful piece of work!