Antimatter – Alternative Matter (2011)

Releasing yet another compilation album, today we have Antimatter and their latest offering “Alternative Matter”. While we like these types of compilation releases that have unreleased tracks and alternative versions, we are kind of getting tired of Antimatter taking their fans to the cleaners with 2 non-new albums after their great “Leaving Eden” back in 2007.

That being said, “Alternative Matter” comes in two different versions: the standard double-CD digipack (reviewed here) and a premium art-book edition with 3 CD’s, one DVD, and a 104 page book. Out of the 22 tracks presented in our promo version, we are mostly interested in Duncan Patterson’s remixes and some enhanced versions.

If you are a huge fan of the band, you will probably be delighted about this release since it has some new versions of “Epitah” and “Flowers” and some demo versions of “Saviour”, “Holocaust”, “The Art of a Soft Landing” and “Dream”. All tracks will surely generate interest between fans of the band, but we dislike that the flow of the album is very sloppy and feels down-right disconnected (like jumping from “Black Sun” to “The Art of a Soft Landing”, a huge musical difference between them.

Another thing we dislike about this album is the fact that songs by Anathema (written by Patterson of course) are still included! C’mon Mr. Moss move on already. We understand these are fan favorites, but try to peddle your music more rather than live through somebody else’s glories (namely Patterson, who is not even on the band anymore). This being said, the rest of the tracks do represent Antimatter and their music transformation over the years very nicely.

Our favorite tracks of this album have to be “Dream”, “Lost Control”, “The Art of a Soft Landing” (Acoustic, Enhanced) version. Some of the remixes like “Expire” sound very weird for an Antimatter album, but might be of interest for certain types of fans of the band. “Epitaph” (Orchestral Mix) is a great closing track and greatly improves over the original version, something rare for the rest of the tracks (even after listening to them more than a 10 times).

In general, we do like this compilation album since we are fans of Antimatter. But we expect Mr. Moss to finally move on and start making new and interesting music, not rehashing other people’s work. As an anniversary compilation “Alternative Matter” is a great closer to a certain period in the band and it should serve as a clean slate for more new music in the future.

Release: Janurary 11th, 2011

Country: UK