Band:	Anareta
Album:	Fear Not
Style:	Chamber, Screamo, Avantgarde metal, Doom metal
Release date:	April 07, 2023
A review by:	musclassia

01. Frozen Wasteland
02. Omnicide
03. Unforgiving Sun
04. The Descent
05. Locality
06. Black Snake

Seeing as metal has reached a point where it feels like there’s no more seismic leaps into hitherto unknown genres left to take, one is left to ponder which novelty fusion band has the potential to inspire a trend. Some unusual hits end up as one-offs (note the lack of Zeal & Ardor clones), but while one swallow doesn’t make a summer, two might be an omen of more to come, as Ode And Elegy and now Anareta suggest.

What is this intriguing fusion I’m hinting towards, I hear you ask? To cut to the chase, it’s the marriage of chamber music and metal. When I reviewed Ode And Elegy last year, I discussed how chamber music and heavier rock styles had overlapped previously, but very rarely within a metal context. Ode And Elegy was something of a chamber/post-metal hybrid, but it also replicated its predecessor project The Pax Cecilia in drawing from post-hardcore. Now, with debut release Fear Not, Louisiana sextet Anareta draw from the same chamber orchestra and post-hardcore wells, but recontextualize those ideas within their own attempt at a metal hybrid.

Among the six members of Anareta, there are three vocalist and three players of orchestral stringed instruments; two individuals fall into both categories, namely violinist Louise Neal and violaist Mackenzie Hamilton, who are joined in the orchestra by cellist Sam Hollier and on the vocal front by bassist Sarah Jacques (guitarist Carey Goforth and drummer Boyanna Trayavona round out the line-up). Now, when taking into account the doom influences on Anarata, as well as the presence of female stringed instrumentalist that double up as vocalists within a large ensemble, one is practically obligated to draw comparisons to SubRosa (and, by extension, The Otolith), and I feel it’s a moderately relevant comparison; if I were to describe the overall sound of Fear Not as lingering somewhere between SubRosa and the heavier/faster parts of Ode And Elegy, it would be a very imperfect description, but also one that might give some helpful context when trying to build a mental picture of what to expect.

One way in which Anareta are very dissimilar to SubRosa is on the vocal front; as the album gets going with the measured tempo and string arrangements of “Frozen Wasteland”, the first voice heard is one delivering anguished screams. There’s something of a lo-fi touch to the production of Fear Not, which adds to the visceral harshness of these vocals; however, it does have some major limitations, which particularly come with trying to balance the metallic instrumentation alongside the strings. In quite a few places, the guitars are really buried, so this balancing often isn’t successful. I will admit that this was one aspect of Fear Not that meant I struggled to particularly click with it on first listen, but this is one of the first albums this year where repeat listens have made a significant impact upon my impression of a record.

One thing that helps to compensate for the parts in which the metal effectively turns into an amorphous swell of churning noise in the background is how effective the stringed instruments are. “Frozen Wasteland” has some delightful violin melodies that imbue a dark folk macabre sense to proceedings, while the harmonizing of the three orchestral instruments on the grandiose “The Descent” is captivating. Also, the electric instruments aren’t always completely lost; later in “Frozen Wasteland”, there’s a shift into a subdued yet insidious post-rock groove, sharp violin outbursts flailing around a slick drum groove, while there’s some nice back-and-forth interplay between the guitar (both with riffs and leads) and violin in “Unforgiving Sun”.

Nevertheless, it’s towards the latter stages of Fear Not where I feel like the concept behind the album starts to unleash its full potential. “The Descent” shows real promise (particularly when it starts contrasting the aforementioned pained screams with some angelic choral harmonies), but is still undermined slightly by the production of the guitars. With “Locality” and “Black Snake”, Anareta manage to get the stars to begin aligning, the guitars having just enough presence to match the energy of the shrieks, dramatic violin and pounding drums and bring maximum intensity. “Locality” has a compelling layering of sound in its latter half (taking cues from Ode And Elegy in borrowing from post-metal), building to an exciting climax. The most exciting moment, however, is reserved for “Black Snake”, which builds deliciously from a morose lull to a dramatic cacophony of sound midway through; it’s a moment that feels like it should be the ending of the album, but Anareta still find some time to start again from zero and build back towards a (slightly less grand) finale.

Fear Not is a very good album, although I feel it sounds like a prototype of something better to come. The way the production undersells the guitars, both in volume and tone (which frankly sounds amateurish at times), is a real weakness of the album, and I do think that there’s a notable jump up in the writing quality in the second half of the tracklist. However, it’s entirely understandable why an album as unique and ambitious as this might not be the final package, and at the very least it’s a solid platform for Anareta to build upon.