imagine what comes out combining pure doom metal melancholy with the atmosphere of pink floyd,yes pink floyd.i was/am amazed by this album,vincent's vocals(though i was afraid after darren left).it's divine dark and melancholic atmosphere are so beautiful given.start listening it from the begining, without stoping and you will realise that this is not just music but true melancholic emotions flowing from the deepest of anathema right into your heart.the lyrics can stand as a poetry anthology themselves,while anathema seem not to play music but create a dark world, a lost heaven.anathema are blessed by the nocturnal muse, and make history with the silent enigma.buy it with no second thought,i'd die for it.

In the ANATHEMA's history, this album is probably their most under rated due to the fact that it recieved almost no press. It is my personnal fave of all their albums (YES, I LIKE IT MORE THAN SERANDES, WHICH IS BRILLIANT). This was their first album after the departure of old vokillist Darren White, new vokillist, new sound. Here we start hearing the interjection of clean vocals but still a little deathy. The songs are more cohesive and tend to have a nice flow, but what really kills is the guitar riffs and harmonies. There are wicked textures added to the songs when they alternate from heavy to mellow guitar parts. Opening track 'RESTLESS OBLIVION' is worth the price alone for this disc. This album is a great link between their old and new material. Under rated classic.

After buying Pentecost III, I was sure I had exhausted Anathema's worthy recordings. As a huge fan of Darren's vocals, I wasn't sure I could stand anything else. Well, I overcame my fear recently and bought Silent Enigma. I have no regrets, whatsoever. It turns out the vocals (performed by guitarist Vincent Cavanagh) are excellent, though different from Darren's. People have compared them to Celtic Frost. I've only heard a couple of CF songs, but I guess its a fair comparison. The music follows the path that Pentecost III was taking. No extreme changes have taken place. While each of the songs were pretty different from each other in P3, though, these songs are more consistent. That doesn't mean they're all the same song, they just fit together in a single album better. Overall, I was impressed with the general quality of this album. While nothing jumps out at me as brilliant, this is well produced and performed, original doom. I recommend this to fans of previous albums, but cannot speak for fans of recent albums.

This album was something of a revelation for me, as the last thing from Anathema before this was "Serenades", which, while good, certainly did not capture my imagination in the way this album did.

When I first heard this I was still expecting some variant on classic British death doom but the signs were definitely there that they were moving away from that sound and progressing somewhere far more interesting.

Obviously, the biggest change to the band were Vincent taking on vocal duties. But stylistically there was more variance as well, more use of clean guitar, more creative use of feedback and other little embellishments that become more obvious on later albums.

I do find that I don't listen to this album as much as others in their back catalogue these days, but it did sustain a rather lengthy rotation through my CD player at the time.

I have given this album an overall 4 stars as it is a good, but realistically it is probably a 3.5 star album,. It's hard to say that, but, realistically, they did improve and change so far from here that it would be hard to give the album a higher review, in light of that.

I just pulled this out of my music library the other day. This is not bad...I always used to compare this to Serenades (Essential doom/death) and Pentecost III, and toss it aside. But, after all these years, I recognize that I may have overlooked the gems on this album. And there are quite a few. For all those fans who like the doom genre or My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost, this is an essential addon to your library. This album has Anathema starting to move away from Doom/Death with many songs actually sung. But, I have to say, the ones which I like the best are NOT. Restless Oblivion, Cerulean Twilight and A Dying Wish are classics. ....Alone is a great track with so much emotion. In fact, this Doom/Death genre or whatever it is, overflows with emotion. Brilliant. A definite buy. And please don't compare A Fine Day to Exit to this or anything before it. Its two completely different genres. Though, I have to say that Serenades, Pentecost III, and The Silent Enigma albums definitely stand out from the crowd...Fine Day to Exit blah blah don't compare....