Serenades is a masterpiece in doom metal. The music its really hard, I read the reviews of other customers who say this album sound a bit repetitive and I disagree. Maybe other albums like ¨Memorandum¨ from Lacrimas profundere are more accesible with variety on voices and instruments, but Serenades is Classic Death/Doom metal (death metal vocals over slow dense guitar riffs). In this case Anathema show a beautiful sense of melody in tracks like ¨Lovelorn rapsody¨ and ¨Sleepless¨ On the other side they have songs like ¨They die¨ that is heavy, slow and raw. A must have for any metal enthusiast.

I gotta say that this is one of my favorite doom metal albums. Slow and boring? Not at all. This is doom metal, folks, not speed metal, not pop rock, or pink floyd inspired rock (like later Anathema).

The first time I heard this many years ago, my knee-jerk reaction was that all songs sounded the same. But then again, I was coming from a Metallica background and didn't really understand what doom metal meant.

Each song on this album has a core doom riff as its core, which has a number of different elements, which may appear choppy to most. The whole song plays with the riff, building on it and with each progression smoothing out the riff until the whole song sounds more 'smooth' for lack of a better word. Of course the two guitars on each song play against each other sometimes offsetting sometimes complementing.

With each listen, you move beyond the superficial (some might call it the same boring riff), and dig deeper and discover different layers of the song.

Give this a try, you'll see what I mean. And do not try and compare this with their subsequent releases - its totally different - though the sound is still there.

Vocals are great with Darren White leading. They nicely complement the music. I believe this is the only album which he sang on.

Defining Doom Metal.

Serenades is a masterpiece in doom metal. The music its really hard, I read the reviews of other customers who say this album sound a bit repetitive and I disagree. Maybe other albums like ¨Memorandum¨ from Lacrimas profundere are more accesible with variety on voices and instruments, but Serenades is Classic Death/Doom metal (death metal vocals over slow dense guitar riffs). In this case Anathema show a beautiful sense of melody in tracks like ¨Lovelorn rapsody¨ and ¨Sleepless¨ On the other side they have songs like ¨They die¨ that is heavy, slow and raw. A must have for any metal enthusiast.

After Eternity this is the next best album by Anathema. Every song is very strong and they all have a strong musical foundation. None of the subsequent Anathema albums were as good as Serenades until Eternity. This is a classic metal album. A must have!

Can anyone PLEASE explain to me what they sing about in "J'ai fait une promesse"? Although I've taken French 101, I have difficulty figuring it out, and I don't have the words.Tell me soon or I'll die! ....I'll check back.