Leaving Edenby Antimatter

This album is one of the only "Antimatter" albums that gets a "half-and-half" rating from me. I like this band for their dark-ambient, melancholic and low-key work. The kind of stuff that would feel fitting to listen-to as one walks down a dark street at night, or is otherwise easy on the nerves. This album had the most heaviness of almost anything they've done. There are a lot more crunchy, overdriven guitars on "Leaving Eden," and for a "band" like Antimatter, that makes it harder to listen to in my case. If I were listening to heavy metal, I'd expect and even embrace that, but to me, heavy sounds on an Antimatter album is like a raving maniac running up and down the stacks in a peaceful library - an unnerving and unwelcome disturbance.

The tracks I enjoyed...

"Conspire" - nice acoustic guitars here. Not very dark or dismal, which is okay. It's a song that reminds me of standing on a wharf looking out to sea and enjoying the atmosphere, or maybe being in a small cottage or other dwelling near the ocean. It's a song about a dysfunctional relationship. Maybe one that's become alienated or estranged, hence all the lyrical mention of frigidity. In a somber, exhausted sort of way, it meanders around both the guitar's fretboard and the situation referenced, as well as its surrounding circumstances, and pulls itself nicely back together at the chorus with the simple questions, "Do you conspire to hold me down? Have I wasted a dream?"

"Landlocked" This one is another very stagnant-feeling instrumental. "Landlocked" means "surrounded almost-entirely (or entirely) by land with no coastline or ocean access." Energy moves faster and more freely by the sea, so I think this song is trying to express that "stuffy" feeling of being in a place where energy gets "stuck" and doesn't move very freely. It (that situation) feels like death. Actually it promotes death, because life itself depends on change and flow.

"The Immaculate Misconception" - This is a very dismal song. It's a nifty instrumental though, and I like it. It's very slow-moving, especially at first, and since the name suggests something of a sentiment of dissent towards religion, I feel the energy of this song as painting a picture of the energetically-stagnant spiritual-drudgery of people hypnotized by the low-frequency, demeaning and self-defeating beliefs and practices of the dominant religions.

"Ghosts" - This song means a lot to me and I can relate to its subject matter. It's a nostalgic and even a bit regretful or at least mournful song about wanting-back what you had (or thought you had) with a person or group of people, maybe old friends, in the past. It's also the realization that it may not have been what you thought it was. I love the line "all the faces on the photographs have changed. To not confuse it all, the names remain the same." It's like saying "we're all so different, entirely different people now than we were then - so much so that the only reason to even use the same names is simple ease of reference." Also, "I'm peering through the holes; been diggin' through the dirt, trying to save the small yesterdays." It's a perfect illustration of that struggle to get-back feelings you once had, only to feel like you'd have an easier time reanimating the dead.

Something I love about Mick Moss' songwriting is his willingness to take the time necessary to allow a melodic movement to thoroughly unfold. In popular music, almost everything is around, three minutes long, first chorus by the 30-second-mark. More room for commercials that way! YAY!! Except, no. No, that really kinda sucks. Antimatter, however, has no such economic preoccupations distracting them from their music. Moss will write an eight-minute song that's totally instrumental after the first 30 seconds. That is most definitely about what I am talking! -.- ::firm nod::