Bristol-based masters of the progressive genre Anta are a band that won’t go down quietly. Let me just say, this is my first time delving into their music. Their latest album Organsesson is hands down, a terrifying and brutal release they’ve unleashed for 2024 so far.
If you think they’re going to sing these happy-go-lucky songs in the forms of Neal Morse and Taylor Swift, guess what? You’ve got the wrong band. Because this band who have been around for nearly 16 years, they’re like a stick of dynamite, ready to explode at any second.
When I was listening to Organesson, at first, I thought Motorpsycho had put out a new album. But it’s deeper and right to the bone. There are some spacey momentum, followed by monk-choirs, doom atmospheres, elements of the Rock in Opposition movement, and the sounds of Mellotron’s coming across the horizon ready to delve into the world of horror like there’s no tomorrow.
Listening to the opening track ‘Q.T.F.K.’ walks into an earlier Floyd section which resembles bits and pieces of the 11-minute epic ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ with Ring Van Mobius handling the production levels up to 11. With occasional vibes that speak of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut, King Crimson, and a frantic guitar loop that takes you deep into the lairs of Arkham Asylum.
I felt this as a theme for the revelation of Harley Quinn from the upcoming streaming animated series from Amazon Prime entitled, Batman: Caped Crusader where it shows her sense of what kind of tricks she will pull for the dark knight. And believe me, you can imagine its her reign of terror that will strike the fear of Gotham to get citizens into a panic.
Then, the last five minutes goes into this crazy form of Doom Opposition which not only speak of Sabbath, but fellow comrades Present and Magma during their Kohntarkosz years. Anta knows their source material to make the volcanoes erupt in a nanosecond. After that, we head into a gothic cathedral, where the sounds of a pipe organ are heard.
The sermon has begun as the ‘Artus Telem’ is revealed to be something crawling up your spine. The Monk choir as I’ve mentioned, isn’t what you expected. It has this sinister calling to the gods with a heavy guitar texture that ascends into the halls of madness while ‘Voxel’ returns to the loop form once more.
All of a sudden, it goes into a combative zone between the Killer-era of Alice Cooper, Canterbury’s obscure maestro trio Egg, Tony Iommi’s textures with Robert Fripp in the lead, and tidal waving drum beats that sets you into a whirlpool of terror, ready for the next booming momentum to occur.
Why do you think that Anta had studied Fripp’s arrangements during the ‘Fracture’ composition? Because they understand what the band were following in the Bartok structure to send shivers down your spine.
Closing up shop is the 11-minute title-track. It continues where ‘Q.F.T.K.’ had left-off where we see an entire world is now a war zone. The bloody aftermath, the guitar effects of a tolling bell in the distance, and where do the citizens go from here after the world has become a dystopian landscape. Anta have created an imaginative movie inside their heads with this.
They suddenly go into the Motorpsycho approach that is unbelievable. But there’s also some extra dosage of Museo Rosenbach’s Zarathustra that comes to mind when you turn this bad boy up. You can hear some elements of ‘Degli Uomini’ which Harris channels along with Alex Bertram-Powell’s heavy organ work, and King’s climatic punch with his drum kit.
This transforms into an attack on all of the senses near the end. This is the band that deserves a welcoming handshake. Organesson is the album that we need. It puts you right over the edge of the cliff, not knowing when you are going to make that jump and launch your parachute at the right time, at the right place before making a soft landing.
