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Love Letter – Anathema’s “Weather Systems”

There are albums which change your life. You listen to them once and you are impaled, transmogrified by the experience, wholly unable to go on being the same person. That

7 years ago

There are albums which change your life. You listen to them once and you are impaled, transmogrified by the experience, wholly unable to go on being the same person. That is the power of music and that’s what we’re all searching for, all of us on the blog. In 2013, the year before my life broke down for the first time, I found such an album and I haven’t shut up about it since (seriously, we’ve posted so much about Anathema and I can’t stop). It was Anathema’s Weather Systems and it completely changed my outlook on life. So, here I am, writing my most important of Love Letters to one of my most important musical discovery’s. Weather Systems is both an extremely clever work of music and an extremely moving piece of art, a wonderful story on transformation and the power of the self.

Here’s the thing about Weather Systems: on its surface, it’s just a power rock/pop album, filled with huge choruses and moving buildups. However, musically, it hides so much beneath the surface. Whether it’s the amazing cymbals on “Lightning Songs”, the incredible piano parts on “The Storm Before the Calm” or the amazing intro to “The Lost Child”, it’s an album of subtle touches beneath a wall of over the top emotions. But more than that, on the artistic level, it’s an album about transformation, about the power of yourself to change your life. And, somehow, it avoids rampant, cliche stickiness and over-simplified views of life. It’s not that Anathema left behind their depressing roots, it’s that they seem to have burned them for fuel in this quest for a better answer, a better way to be in light of the hardships and not instead of the hardships.

And for that, it carries the listener with it. It floods your self with comforting light, a believable and yet energizing presence that says “You can do this. It’s right here for the taking. You’re in reach. I know it’s hard, but you must reach for it a little bit longer and its yours”. It was the exact message I needed at the time. It was the exact music I needed at the time. And I discovered it through Heavy Blog, when I was still “just” a reader (AKA, the main thing keeping this blog alive). In a way, this is a Love Letter to the entire blog. But also to Anathema’s Weather Systems, a masterpiece if there ever was one.

Eden Kupermintz

Published 7 years ago