Band:	Anata
Album:	The Conductor's Departure
Style:	Technical death metal
Release date:	June 2006

01. Downward Spiral Into Madness
02. Complete Demise
03. Better Grieved Than Fooled
04. The Great Juggler
05. Cold Heart Forged In Hell
06. I Would Dream Of Blood
07. Disobedience Pays
08. Children's Laughter
09. Renunciation
10. The Conductor's Departure

Anata Is actually a band with a huge history which, by the way, I'm not familiar with. Their first full-length came in 1998 if I'm not mistaken, then they released 3 more albums and one split CD; the funny thing is that I heard their name until Wicked World/Earache released an album called Under A Stone With No Inscription back in 2004, but that's a whole different story; right now it's time for The Conductor's Departure to be reviewed and analyzed.

If you are a lazy person who despises long reviews and hates to read a lot, let me make things easier for you: This album is a brilliant attack ready to disintegrate your eardrums with technicality and violent explosions, buy it.

Now for the people interested in reading a little more; this album characterizes perfectly all that is good in Technical Death Metal, we have it all in here, melodic passages, clean guitars, complex timing, long solos, irregular scales and overwhelming structures all over the place. There are few bands combining all those features as most of the times technical groups try to focus on one and only one point to reach it perfectly; for example, Quo Vadis has the melody, Sceptic has the irregular structures, Theory In Practice has the passages, etc. but Anata takes all those elements and creates a perfect combination in this album.

Downward Spiral Into Madness could be the best example of this band's capabilities and abilities. The whole instrumentation is managed in layers and the overall structure shows a really sharp and complex composition; the song starts with a melodious introduction and then explodes its power and everything becomes really aggressive, finally, after a couple of passages and bridges, the song concludes with an artistic (almost glam) fade-out. So anyway, that song is great but you'll find more songs in this album don't worry.

I liked this album a lot, it's quite entertaining and it will please the target audience in an amazing way. Anata is not a young band at all, that would be my main concern as they haven't yet created a true MASTERPIECE; sure The Conductor's Departure is a great album and maybe more, but it will not reform the genre as far as I can see. Still is a worthwhile album and it deserves its place in your shelves for sure.

Best Tracks: "Downward Spiral Into Madness", "The Conductor's Departure", "Better Grieved Than Fooled"