Anata

Anata vs. Bethzaida - War Vol. II
Season of Mist, 1999
Genre: Death Metal

Anata:
1. Let Me Become Your Fallen Messiah
2. With Me You Shall Fall
3. Day of Suffering (Morbid Angel Cover)
4. The Tranquility of My Last Breath (Bethzaida Cover)
Bethzaida:
5. Last Days of Sodoma
6. Expulsion
7. Epistel Nr. 30: Drick Ur Ditt Glas (Swedish Traditional)
8. Under Azure Skies (Anata Cover)

Side Bethzaida here
Side Anata:

This is the second installment of Season of Mist’s War Volume series where two bands face off against each other.  With the success of the first one, which was …And Oceans vs. Bloodthorn they decided to put another volume together.  This one features Anata and Bethzaida, two very good bands in my opinion, especially after listening to this.

Well this is my first time hearing Anata and I’ve got to say, goddamn what a good band.  This is not your run of the mill Death Metal band because the production is so dirty and bears elements to Black Metal from time to time.  But regardless of the dirty sounding guitar style, they exude so much power riff after riff and with a vocalist like this it’s easy to be backed up and get really into the music.  The first song “Let me Become Your Fallen Messiah” plows through one of the more intense sounding songs I’ve heard, which surprises me because it’s actually a fairly short song, but it’s just so well written.  Thrown in for good measure are elements of thrash here and there which amazingly add to the power behind the progression in the riffs.  One of the four songs they recorded is a great cover of “Day of Suffering” by Morbid Angel and they do the song justice with a quality cover.  I actually think Anata’s vocalist sounds better for the recording of the song than the original recording of David Vincent.  Albeit David did a great job on the original, but boy can Anata’s front man bellow through a song.  Being that this is one of Season of Mists War Volume’s Anata had to also do a cover of a Bethzaida song and surprisingly they do a superb job because Bethzaida’s original masterpiece didn’t lose much of its edge at all.  In fact Anata increased the intensity of the original version and made it a much more crushing experience, but they managed to keep in quite an excellent dose of the originals melody.  

The War Volume series is obviously a great idea on behalf of the record label Seasons of Mist since it introduces you to the bands on their label as well as gives you new tracks from bands you may already enjoy.  I think this is yet another very successful installment, since from my point of view I probably would have never gotten this if I had never heard Bethzaida before, so in the end I was exposed to Anata, which turned out to be a more than excellent band.  Obviously this is something to be checked out.