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Eternity – waste of time.
I was in a secondary school when I heard about this band. It must’ve been in 1999 because it was the year when their latest album entitled Judgement was released. Somebody, I don’t remember who, pressed this album on me in the school hall. “Take it,” said the person, “you’ll like it.” I glared at this guy (or maybe it was a girl?) and asked, “What makes you so sure about that?” The person just beamed and left me with the cassette in my hand.
When I came home I played the tape. Somehow I managed to listen to the first two songs without yawning. But then it happened – the album turned out to be a bore. I was used to listening to music that was much faster and harder. Unforunately, Mr Cavanagh and the rest of the band created a record stuffed with maudlin songs. When my listetning was over I felt like “What the hell is that?” I decided not to listen to Anathema anymore.
Some time later I bumped into my old homie who was a big fan of this band. I started to grumble at Judgement. You know, the ususal talk about those artists who want to sell their albums to the biggset group of listeners and their music is not worth my time. “Have you heard Anathema’s previous records?” asked my friend. I shook my head. “Well, you should,” he said, “They are completely different.” He lent me their first albums. And that was it. I spent hours listening to that stuff.
Anathema was formed in 1990 in Liverpool. Their previous name was Pagan Angel (gee, who let them name the band like that?:/). The two first demos had very good reviews. In 1992 the band released The Crestfallen EP. Their first long-playing record was entitled Serenades. As far as I remember, in 1994 another band from England, Cradle of Filth, released the album The Principle of Evil Made Flesh. A song with Darren White’s vocals can be found on that album (“A Dream of Wolves in the Snow”). Darren is Anathema’s former vocalist. He left in 1995 and formed his own band. Vincent Cavanagh became a new singer. I’m not going to write about their every record. I’ll just skip to that famous (or infamous to me) Judgement album.
As I wrote at the beginning , I’m not a big fan of Judgement. The songs are sad, full of pain and lost hope. This is a perfect album for suicidal people. With this album Anathema broke with the doom metal genre and started to play soft and emotional music. The album was dedicated to Helen Cavanagh, Vincent’s late mother. This fact provides us with explanation of why the musicians chose this kind of music. Nevertheless, when I listen to this recording, I missed the band’s previous achievements. So those of you who thought that I was going to devote this piece of writing to one of the songs that can be found on this depressing album can be really disappointed.
Question: “So why did you start your article describing this whole event connected with “Judgement”?
Answer: “Why not? This was my first contact with Anathema. And besides, I contradict myself. This is what Walt Whitman taught me through his poetry. ‘I contain multitudes’. No matter how much I tell you that I don’t like Judgement, I’ll listen to it days and nights. And you know what else? I’m listening to it right now! And I still don’t like it. What are you going to about that? What are you going to do?”
In 1994 the band released We are the Bible single. It contains only two songs. I’m gonna focus on the song entitled “Eternal Rise of the Sun”.
An unstoppable end
The world turns every day
An ending with no end
So, for this time of morning
I can no longer cry
Even though the story goes on
The script is being written
Start shape our destiny
We are the bible...
Believe in angels, they believe in you
Oh, spread your wings, there is more than this darkness
Open your eyes, the horizon has no end
You can see forever, you can know all time
You can live forever...
Every dusk can blind, as a sunrise on a day
Every sunset there is, lifts the eternal sunrise
And the sunrise ends when the sun dies...
And every ending has an eternal beginning...
We are the bible...
The beginning is quite readable. The only thing worth mentioning here is the last line. We’ve got here something that I would call a paradox. I don’t now whether you agree with me. I was also considering an oxymoron here (like the one we can find in the expression ‘black snow’) but I’d have to consult my literature lecturer about that. As far as I’m concerned, oxymoron is a sort of paradox. Anyway, the speaker mentions the fact that our world becomes or changes (turns) into an everlasting end. And this ending is at the same time a new beginning. Our fate is sealed. Our lives are being written. Someone or something controls them (do you remember the Fates? Who were they? Please, email the answer). We are the pages of the new bible.
The speaker says that we should be brave, we should “spread our wings” and see through darkness (oh God, isn’t it similar to the “thinking outside the box” idea?). We should fly towards the horizon which is again the wonderful image of eternity. There is no end, everything is eternal.
The vision of eternity is presented in the last part of the song through the image of the sun. The sun is connected with the cycle we can observe every day. When the night comes we feel blinded by the dusk (let’s remember that “there is more than this darkness”). The sun dies in order to be reborn once again in the morning. This is the new beginning. We are again able to see with the first rays of light.
I don’t know ‘bout you, but for me this text is really optimistic. It concerns “birth -> death -> eternal life (or, if you prefer, reincarnation)” conception. And it is so close to the final line of a prayer by St Francis of Assisi: “It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
A very powerful song.
Zbyszek
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