WHOOPS! Turns out these clips are mad old. Still, maybe they’re new to you… they were to me! – AR

Wow, y’know what I just realized? Saturday will mark the fourth anniversary of the release of Anata’s excellent The Conductor’s Departure. And the band has been promising us a new album FOR-EV-ER (actually just since 2008, but it certainly feels like forever), but up ’til now, nothing. Zip, zero, zilch, bupkus. The always vague “label issues” chestnut has been the only explanation for the delay, but the album has allegedly been finished for quite some time. Meanwhile, we don’t even know what it’s called. We don’t even have a title to cling to and make us fantasize about how the album might sound!

Or do we? The band has posted two excerpts from the record, entitled simply “Greed Conquers All Excerpt 1″ and “Greed Conquers All Excerpt 2,” on their MySpace page. It’s ninety seconds of (instrumental) music total, and I’m not even clear if it’s two different sections of one song called “Greed Conquers All,” or if the band is revealing that the album is/would be called Greed Conquers All; these sound like two different songs, but taken out of context, it could be two different sections of one proggy tune.

In any case, it sounds promising. And at least we know that there is a new Anata album out there somewhere. Hopefully these lil’ teases are only the beginning of a promotional campaign which will end with us all enjoying some new Swedish technical death metal. ‘Cause four years is way too long for a band this good to be away.

-AR

Thanks to Dan Wolfson for the tip!

We haven’t written about Anata all that much because, well, they haven’t done that much in the time MS has been around. Their last album, The Conductor’s Departure, came out in 2006, before MetalSucks existed; we named that record “Album of the Day” once back when we still did “Album of the Day;” then, in July of 2008, we celebrated as the band announced that they were working on a new offering.

Of course, that album never actually materialized. In a MySpace posting from February of this year, the band promised that “we will try to make the release [of the new album] happen this year,” but that’s not very encouraging. And while drummer Conny Pettersson has started a YouTube page with some live footage from last February, the videos aren’t great quality, and are (obviously) no substitute for a real album.

So where art thou, Anata? What’s the problem? Can I get you anything? A foot rub? A glass of warm milk? A joint? Is there band drama? Money drama? Is the record even done? If so, surely someone must wanna release it, right?

Hopefully we’ll learn more sooner rather than later. While we wait, here’s some of that live footage I mentioned…

-AR

European death metal fans can get their fix today with some quick updates on Decapitated and Anata. So check out Decapitated’s video for “Day 69″ above, then click through the jump for some actual, y’know, news.

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