Anomalie, the musical project of Marrok (live Harakiri For The Sky), is back with its third album Visions, following on from 2014’s Between The Light and 2015’s Refugium. It’s another stunning piece of work, and is both beautifully emotive and crushingly bleak – but in all honesty, I expected nothing less after how good Anomalie’s previous releases have been.
Split into seven visions, each track has its own distinctness, yet they also link masterfully together, which is testament to good songwriting because the flow and general construction of the album as a whole is top-notch – there’s a very natural progression from one song to the next. Visions is coherent, solid and extremely hard-hitting.
Anomalie paints a breathtaking picture on Visions, with an early highlight of the album being the breathtaking second track Vision II: The Wanderer. Starting with a wall of noise, you can’t help but know that this track means business, and the more melodic injections in the song give it a lot more atmosphere, especially when the melodic guitar riffs are performed in tandem with the harsh vocals, as the two juxtapose against one another well. And another fantastic inclusion is fifth track Vision V: Starless Nights, which takes a more melodic route for the most part and some of the repeating melodies will surely get stuck in your head, such are the earworms that they are, particularly in the latter half of the track which is very instrumentally driven.
Once again, Anomalie has delivered something special with their new album – Visions is a very special and engaging piece, and one that definitely should not be missed.
10/10
