Katatonia - The Elegy of Depression

Sweden's Katatonia are a band that in recent years have become associated with the sonic portrayal of depression. Not simply through dark sounds or sad lyrics, but by developing a personal style of lyrical decadence, inner drama and sonic catharsis. Their niche isn't large, but it's distinctive, influential and significant, given that even highly personal acts like Alcest, Agalloch or Italy's own Novembre and Klimt 1918 owe a little something to the Stockholm band.

Summing up Katatonia's discography, and especially providing listening examples to fully capture who they are, isn't easy: they belong to that group of bands who have evolved their style so much over the years that their catalogue contains albums wildly different from one another. So much so that, on a first listen, the compositional style and sound might seem to belong to different bands entirely. Just as you can't point to a single album, or worse, a single representative song, for the musical journey of names like Radiohead or Ulver, since doing so would miss crucial transformations, or risk giving a misleading impression of the band. 

Nor can one casually sum up a band that has ranged from the funereal doom of the early '90s, to gothic, to alternative, openly drawing inspiration as much from the imposing works of Paradise Lost as from the dark ballads of Metallica's "Black Album", combining influences from names as different as Fields Of The Nephilim, Jeff Buckley, The Cure, Sun Kil Moon, Tool, Slowdive, Bathory, Tori Amos or Porcupine Tree; and giving rise to collaborations or side projects with members of various other friendly bands such as Opeth, Edge Of Sanity, Gathering, Long Distance Calling or Pineapple Thief. 

With these necessary caveats out of the way, and referring you to the Spotify sidebar for our partial selection of songs by the Scandinavians, there's nonetheless a compositional core running through their attitude and intentions. Looking back after 25 years of career, the band itself speaks of a sort of progressive nature in their music. Not in the sense of replicating the sound of '70s prog bands, but in the sense of having a creative drive built on sonic exploration and the constant updating and evolution of their style, without ever shying away from influences and inspiration drawn from wildly different genres. This holds especially true for their latest records. Guitarist and founder Anders Nyström puts it this way in the biography currently (2017) featured on the band's website: "Our style and musical language have changed quite a bit from 1993 to 2016, but I can still sense a common message in our atmospheres from the very start. Maybe you could call us a progressive-metal band with a deep passion for non-metal music? It's easy to reach every branch of a tree and shake them once you've got solid roots to climb on."

But above all, what acts as the trait d'union throughout the band's career are the dark, melancholic atmospheres and themes, melancholic in the truest sense of the word. Depressive, starting with the band's very name and with the stunning yet dramatic artwork – almost all of it the work of artist Travis Smith – which fully captures the essence and mood of each record. While clearly expressed each time through different sonic approaches (first perhaps with alienating, obsessive riffs, later with gentle, wistful melodies, for instance), songwriting that keeps evolving (starting out more minimal and essential, then becoming more meticulous and enriched with sonic counterpoints), and even as the details and tones shift (from more anguished moments to gentler, more intimate ones), these traits serve as a connecting thread throughout the albums. For the other founder, singer Jonas Renkse, it's also a way to vent his own past bouts of depression and to connect with listeners. In an interview for MetalBlast he explains: "I've had a lot to do with depression throughout my life, but music is a great release valve. It's like a pressure valve that lets the steam out. If I hadn't had music, I probably would have had to deal with it some other way, probably in a more destructive manner, so for me it's really been a positive thing to have it. When you're going through a tough time, there's always music to turn to; yours or someone else's, and you can listen to it to feel comforted. […] I've always felt [a kind of cathartic feeling in realizing you're not the only one feeling certain emotions], even before I started writing music myself. It's been a natural thing ever since I started writing music. For me, knowing that people find relief through my music is like paying back everything I've gotten from other musicians. It's a good thing."

For Chronicles of Chaos: "Katatonia feel like a huge sense of relief. Being able to write music, lyrics, and work on an album is a tremendous feeling. Creating something, watching it grow into pieces that work so well, is simply wonderful. I need to make music to be happy, otherwise I wouldn't have any peace of mind, to the point of not knowing what to do with myself."

And again Nyström, for Rockline: "Our main desire is to explore the more progressive and aggressive sides of music, but without ever losing the dynamic of having melancholic soft parts and a dark atmosphere running through everything we do; these things will always be the true soul of Katatonia."

We'll now try to explore and walk you through, step by step, Katatonia's long journey with all its distinctive facets, from their beginnings to their latest work.

The initial core of Katatonia formed in Stockholm in 1987, made up of two teenagers, Jonas Petter Renkse (initially on vocals and drums) and Anders Nyström (bass and guitar), who would occasionally get together to play songs by their favorite artists, ranging across new wave and the underground metal scene, especially the then-emerging Scandinavian one. The duo later formed an official band and chose this name in 1991, the year they began recording their first demos and distributing them on their own.

The first tape was titled Rehearsal (followed by a second part a few months later), a very raw effort, in line with the first Northern European bands who were starting, in those years, to blend the slow, downtuned, plodding and oppressive rhythms of doom-metal with the dark atmospheres and growled vocals of death-metal, thereby laying the groundwork for gothic-metal (far darker in these years and quite different from the more polished productions we're used to today).

The record was followed in 1992 by Jhva Elhoim Meth, again self-produced, which shows a notable artistic growth for the band, settling into a funereal, alienating doom-metal. The first point of comparison that comes to mind is another Swedish band, Candlemass, regarded as institutions of the genre since the '80s; but there's a key difference in Katatonia's style, as they transfigure their countrymen's more solemn tones to focus instead on icy, otherworldly atmospheres. Several atmospheric melodic touches also reveal the influence of the Anglo-Saxon darkwave movement, bringing them closer to another, slightly earlier, Swedish band, Tiamat, who at the time were blending death-metal, doom-metal and goth-rock, and were without doubt an important source of inspiration for Renkse and Nyström.

In these very early years Katatonia were also fascinated by the aesthetic of  black-metal bands, which at the time, for better or worse, inspired much of the underground Scandinavian metal scene, underground especially among younger musicians. The Swedes didn't absorb so much the musical style as the surrounding elements, like "dark" pseudonyms for the musicians and, above all, lyrics tied to mysticism and anti-Christianity (though only during this initial phase).

Jhva, in particular, stands for Jehova (which the two didn't know how to spell at the time), and the title, in a somewhat rough-and-ready Hebrew, translates as "Jehovah, my god, is dead." Given the Swedes' very young age at the time, this wasn't really a genuine philosophical reflection on themes dear to Nietzsche (something other metal bands have done more maturely and in greater depth over the years, as in the case of Chuck Schuldiner's Death), but rather an expression of rebellion, a sense of alienation and unease, as well as a calculated pose meant for effect. Even the stage names used by the musicians follow the stereotypes of the scene: Renkse initially goes by "Lord Seth", while Nyström adopts the nickname Blakkheim, which he'll keep for much longer.

The essence of this early incarnation of Katatonia can be summed up, aside from their name (catatonia being a psychiatric condition in which the subject displays negativism, immobility and a lack of expression), in a line from the track "Without God", which goes "your fucking god is dead, and shall forever be".

In the meantime, Guillaume "Israphel Wing" Le Huche joins on bass. Their growth catches the attention of a few independent labels, who first reissue the remarkable previous demo as an Ep and then, in 1993, allow the two — barely of legal age — to record their first studio album, titled Dance Of December Souls, which sums up and consolidates the approach developed on the early tapes. The record is produced by Dan Swanö, who also plays keyboards; an important multi-instrumentalist, a tireless musician and talent scout from Stockholm, best known for his work with bands like Edge Of Sanity and also for the early support he gave to celebrated acts such as Opeth and Katatonia themselves, with whom he forges a fruitful friendship.

This is a work enormously different from the band's most recent albums, the ones the Swedes are best known for. Rawer and more decadent, built on slow, repeated riffs in a funeral-march style, it captures the essence of the doom-metal genre, a style that saw some of its leading exponents emerge precisely in Sweden. The song structures are simple, at times repetitive, also because the tracks tend to run long, which gives the whole thing a "monolithic" quality. Renkse's vocal performance at this early stage follows a purely tormented, "roared" style of singing, known in the jargon as "growl". This type of vocal delivery originated in death-metal, but it has also been used by numerous doom and especially gothic bands to lend a more macabre atmosphere to their work. It's not the most accessible style and isn't for everyone, but for those who get used to it, it can be a highly enjoyable kind of vocalization. Renkse, in particular, favours relatively high-pitched, rasping tones, which bring him closer to "screaming", a style more closely associated with black-metal.

Besides the aforementioned Tiamat, the band's main metal inspiration are England's Paradise Lost, with their cornerstone album "Gothic", released in 1991, which marks the watershed between the early death/doom-metal experiments and fully-fledged gothic-metal. But — a detail that wasn't immediately obvious before the internet age — a significant influence on Katatonia's atmospheres, attitude and melodic sensibility also came from the darkwave movement and English goth-rock bands. Renkse and Nyström are in fact fans of bands like Cure, Sisters Of Mercy and, above all, Fields Of The Nephilim, whose milestone album "Elizium" they devour. The duo regard it as elusive, atmospheric music, capable of giving Katatonia that extra splash of colour to set them apart from the rest of the metal scene. This passion aligns them with other well-known bands with a similar sensibility on their early records, such as Anathema, My Dying Bride or Gathering, who are taking their first steps at the same time, helping to redefine the musical standards of doom-metal and gothic-metal, before each going their separate ways.

As further proof of this passion, in 1994 the Swedes recorded the previously unreleased "Scarlet Heavens" (which would later surface, four years on, on the Ep Saw You Drown): purely post-punk in style, with basslines and melodies paying tribute to/imitating early-80s goth-rock, showing both the affinities and the differences between the Katatonia sound and that scene. It was written together with Dan Swanö, who around the same time launched a dedicated project built around this sound called Nightingale (before later steering it towards prog/AOR territory).

In early '95 a new Ep of unreleased material came out, For Funerals To Come, less striking than its predecessor (though still well received within the scene), which marks both Le Huche's sudden departure and Renkse's last outing on growl/scream vocals, as he began suffering vocal problems and could no longer sustain the roaring style of singing. Unable to find replacements, nor new members with whom to steadily keep the band going for new recordings and, above all, for the demanding tours, the two temporarily disbanded the group and looked elsewhere, devoting themselves to other projects.

Renkse decides to form October Tide together with his friend, guitarist Fredrik Norrman, with whom he would carry forward the doom-metal approach of early Katatonia, and who over the years would carve out their own small but loyal fanbase.

Nyström, meanwhile, devotes himself to melodic-black-metal with Diabolical Masquerade and to thrash/black-metal with Bewitched.

Things are looking up, and the two realise they can turn back and pick up where they left off; the following year they reform Katatonia, adding Norrman as a third official member. Norrman's addition is certainly an important one: he can share guitar duties with Nyström, who in turn can go back to playing bass. More importantly, the role of lead vocalist is taken on by a young man, also a friend of Renkse's and previously introduced to him by Swanö, namely Mikael Åkerfeldt, who had just released his own recording debut with what would go on to become one of Sweden's most renowned and acclaimed metal bands, Opeth.

With this renewed line-up, Katatonia release what is, up to this point, their personal masterpiece, namely Brave Murder Day, produced for the last time by Swanö and followed shortly after by the Ep of unreleased material Sounds Of Decay (of which two versions exist, one without Norrman, because the band, unhappy with the recording, decided to redo it from scratch while he was unavailable, and which was later permanently folded into the reissue of the full-length).

Brave Murder Day is, at the same time, very different from traditional doom-metal, mostly because of the harrowing distortion and growled vocals borrowed from the death/doom-metal scene, and it's also one of the genre's essential milestones, one to look to in order to trace its evolution. The sound becomes obsessive, helped along by the driving 4/4 rhythm, building alienating walls of sound accompanied by subtle melodic touches that create bittersweet atmospheres. The tracks have a highly original style, built around long instrumental passages from which the growling emerges. Norrman's guitar contribution, in some ways close to the then-nascent gothic-metal (many riffs are certainly reminiscent of Paradise Lost's "Icon" and "Draconian Times"), allows the album's style to be further personalised, with layered guitars that aren't averse to quieter digressions, faster repetitions and midtempo returns. Åkerfeldt's growl vocals are low, phlegmy and otherworldly, while Renkse (unable to roar) sporadically supports him with clean backing vocals. His clean vocals completely carry the excellent "Day". The imagery accompanying the album is visceral, from the strong purple tones of the cover to the samples from the film "Shining" (in "Enditme") and to the lyrics, which have become more mature and introspective, particularly melancholic and nihilistic ("The sound of falling/ When the pictures are moving/ Dead in time" goes the chorus of the opening "Brave"). These features heighten the album's grieving, anguished atmosphere.

An influence that went largely unnoticed is that of shoegazer bands and their guitar feedback: Renkse and Nyström are big fans of bands like Slowdive, whose albums, especially "Souvlaki", they particularly cherish and feel deeply attached to, as well as the on-stage attitude of staring down at their own shoes (actually, they were just working the guitar pedalboard) instead of interacting with the audience.

Even if they weren't the first, Katatonia are without a doubt among the pioneers of those metal bands partly inspired by this movement, filtered through their own style and reshaped in an original way. Several bands that rose to prominence in later years also drew strong influence from this record. The most striking example we feel we can point to is French multi-instrumentalist Neige with his Alcest; but it's easy to find, after 1995, a doom, gothic or post-metal band that has taken, in one way or another, even just a hint of inspiration from Brave Murder Day. If we're talking about dark metal in general, "gothic" and beyond, it's one of its cornerstones.

I want to be forgotten

I want you to forgive

How I’m losing all this

It’s just the way I live

Despite gaining decent traction on the metal underground scene, and having set off on a solid European tour alongside Norway's In The Woods, the Swedes feel they have a much more varied musical background to draw from; they're in fact deeply struck by songwriters like Jeff Buckley or Tori Amos, whose “Grace” (1994) and “From The Choirgirl Hotel” (1998) they find strongly in tune, mood- and atmosphere-wise, with what they want to express. But above all it's Mark Kozelek's production work with Red House Painters that gives them a strong push to make their own songs more "real", with more genuine and spontaneous vocal lines, and lyrics more directly inspired by life's events (good, but above all bad). They're also slowly discovering Porcupine Tree, who will go on to play a bigger role in their future output.

At this point, then, Katatonia decide to give their style a turn and develop it in an ever more personal direction.

The first step is to confirm the use of clean vocals for Renkse, and to extend it to every track in place of Åkerfeldt (who must now devote himself entirely to Opeth, though he'll still stick around for a while to oversee the vocal production). After that, the songwriting shifts toward shorter track lengths and increasingly bare, repetitive riffing, heightening the obsessive, claustrophobic character of the sound. The result is Discouraged Ones. On this album it's clear how the band's doom metal is gradually morphing into a peculiar strain of distorted, decadent rock - stark, alienated, drawing on alternative rock and gothic metal, deliberately bare-bones and as rhythmically and compositionally simple as possible. That's also why the bass, temporarily entrusted to Mikael Oretoft, is used so sparingly.

The lyrics are less refined, more intimate, stripped of the fantastical elements of the early records, and therefore more spontaneous. Renkse sings them in an afflicted, minimal way, almost as if he didn't want his voice to be heard at all. The cover art is vivid, with the dark figure of an angel set against a hazy, seemingly fiery, almost infernal background.

These are twelve tracks of melodic anguish and inner collapse, marked by Renkse's pained voice. Certainly not for everyone, and at times a bit repetitive, but rich in expressive intensity within their simplicity. Tracks like the opener "I Break", the moving "Deadhouse", the funereal "Gone" or the murky "Instrumental" play up the band's melodic side, while "Stalemate" or "Last Resort" push the lysergic, obsessive tones to the extreme.

The album's emblem, though, is "Saw You Drown", an aching, distorted ballad in which the metaphor of a loved one drowning stands for the loss of a relationship with them, and a defeat whose blame is pinned entirely on one's own failings. The agonizing litany sung in the chorus finds a point of contact between Robert Smith on “The Same Deep Water As You” and Thom Yorke of Radiohead; it's short and monotonous, and precisely for that reason effective, while Renkse all but bursts into tears reciting a few simple lines (“Don’t you know I’m the end of what we’ll be/ and right below us the last thing you’ll see/ in the water I saw you drown/ down the water I saw you drown”). The feeling here isn't even sadness anymore, but abandonment, desolation and powerlessness. A symphony of pain and human wretchedness. The disease of depression set to music.

The emotional, hallucinated force of the record recalls, in some ways, the role played by Unknown Pleasures” by Joy Division, given the deeply pessimistic mood and the rawness of the lyrics. And just as that album was inexorably followed by Closer“, Katatonia soon after release a record whose cover (a ghost and a crow appearing along railway tracks at night) and whose title say it all: Tonight’s Decision. A parallel with due differences, of course, chief among them the distorted guitars, which owe more to Paradise Lost than to the Doors.

The record, which also marks the band's debut on the historic Peaceville label, is a direct evolution of its predecessor. Renkse now focuses entirely on vocals, asking Dan Swanö to temporarily handle drums for the recording sessions. The guitars are less scorching and more spectral, making the record less emotional but darker and more decadent, with an overall sense of abandonment. The vocal parts swing between mournful affliction and apathy. Part of the metal trade press dubs this sound - more unofficially in reference to Katatonia alone than to define an actual scene - depressive rock. The band itself describes it as something not quite "gothic", but related to it ("don't really call it gothic […] it's kind of goth-related").

The opener "For My Demons" is emblematic of depression, with its bleak, spectral atmospheres, while "Had To (Leave)" is Katatonia's most hallucinogenic, alienated peak. Tracks like "I Am Nothing", "In Death A Song", "No Good Can Come Of This" or "A Darkness Coming" help build a desolate, ruinous mood. The symbolic cover art, with a ghost along a railway, suggests a musical depiction that's getting "closer" to suicide.

Renkse & co., however, are not Ian Curtis, both because these two records don't reach the lyrical heights of the late English songwriter, and because the Swedes don't arrive (thankfully!) at the inevitable extreme consequences of that atmosphere. The kinship lies in a resigned despair, but while Joy Division never allowed themselves the luxury of crying out for help, in Katatonia one can still sense a search for some foothold of hope. This can also be felt in the presence of a ghost track at the end, which signals that the band's narrative is far from over, despite the overall atmosphere of malaise. It can also be inferred, in part, from the presence of a Jeff Buckley cover, the successful "Nightmares By The Sea", since it shows a band still seeking contact with the outside world, still wanting to convey its passions and find release in music it feels most akin to.

Having made clear that Katatonia still have much to express, the band decides to finally settle on a stable line-up, so as to stop relying on friends as session men and make album-making a more cohesive process. Mattias "Kryptan" Norrman, brother of guitarist Frederick, is recruited on bass, freeing up the other guitarist, Nyström, to focus on his own parts without distractions. Mattias is a talented, eclectic bassist, who had previously played in the raw, satirical death metal outfit Dellamorte, and who brings along an appreciation for both metal and wave bands.

On drums, meanwhile, Daniel Liljekvist is brought in, a choice that proves spot on: even though Katatonia mostly write in standard 3/4 and 4/4 time, Daniel manages to flesh out the beats with multiple phrasings, numerous triplets and personal flourishes that give the rhythm section its own distinctive touch, to the point of making it sound as if they were playing in unusual time signatures. His style isn't about showing off or crude double-pedal overkill, but about painstaking, detail-oriented work.

With the line-up now set, they enter the studio in 2000 to produce what is their most varied and carefully crafted work to date, Last Fair Deal Gone Down, released in 2001. It's a record that brings to completion the band's evolution from despairing doom toward an alt-rock/dark-rock sound that grows ever hazier and more personal, while still capable of enveloping metallic distortion, honed by the band over the course of their last few records.

Overall, Last Fair Deal Gone Down partly scales back the obsessive, hallucinated tones of its predecessors in favor of more refined songwriting, with more polished arrangements, more bittersweet atmospheres, and small touches of electronics adding extra sheen. There are still a few doom-metal echoes in the harder riffs, but the record has far more in common with Cure and Fields Of The Nephilim, with a few touches reminiscent of the dark ballads on Metallica's "Black Album" (in interviews Nystrom recalls spending entire days with headphones on listening to "Nothing Else Matters" and "The Unforgiven").

The lyrics remain steeped in melancholy throughout, revealing a more intimate sadness in a kind of millennial "Disintegration" - though bleaker and more metallic. Renkse's vocals grow more versatile and multifaceted, giving freer rein to his creative vein and sounding less repetitive. The opening "Disposession" is perhaps the album's masterpiece, a brilliant piece of gothic-rock that blends sweet and bitter between gentle arpeggios, small evocative guitar counterpoints, and dreamlike touches. But it's well matched by gems like "Teargas", with its "dreamy" walls of sound, or the melancholic ballad "Tonight's Music", as simple as it is moving and self-pitying. The most unsettling moment comes with the excellent "The Future Of Speech", with its nocturnal, spectral introduction and alienating climax, in which Renkse voices a false note of hope that instead heralds the exact opposite ("A brand new day/ It can't get worse/ Hear myself say/ It can't get worse"), along with a general sense of inadequacy.

At this point it becomes clear that Katatonia face a choice: either self-indulgence, and thus the constant repetition of the same stereotypes, which would make them seem insincere and contrived, or a clean break with the past.

Having stabilized their line-up, they now have all the solid foundations and the necessary groundwork to open up new paths.

Meanwhile, October Tide broke up after just two albums, but Renkse and Nyström decide to reunite once again with Åkerfeldt and Swanö to form Bloodbath, a death-metal supergroup conceived as a deliberate divertissement built around the genre's most effective clichés. After that, it's now 2002, and they return to the recording studio with Katatonia after looking around a bit and broadening their horizons on the music scene.

The two were deeply struck by bands like prog-rockers Porcupine Tree, whom they had already cited as an influence for some years, as well as by the heavy American alternative scene. They greatly admire Maynard James Keenan's work with Tool, but also with the softer, more melodic A Perfect Circle. They also appreciate the groove-metal of Machine Head and the downtuned guitars of nu-metal acts Mudvayne and Deftones. These are years in which the Swedes explore different sounds without prejudice.

The following March, Viva Emptiness is finally released, and it's a bolt from the blue. Praised almost unanimously by critics and embraced by fans to the point of charting for the first time (in Finland), it's an album that marks a decisive turning point from the past. The previous records were already quite different from the band's debut, but a common thread could still be traced through them, one that had accompanied the group's stylistic development from album to album. Viva Emptiness, on the other hand, cuts sharply away from all its predecessors, overwhelming the listener with its melodic impact. First and foremost, it's a far more energetic and decidedly more metallic record.

From the scorching opening track "Ghost Of The Sun" onward, the Swedes deliver an immediate alternative metal, built on explosive riffs, atmospheres that are at once "gothic" and urban (enriched by carefully dosed keyboards and downtuned guitars), interlocking time signatures and sonic flourishes that make the record more varied. The rhythm section shows off its best, with Norrman and Liljekvist sounding fuller than ever. The band's distant doom roots are hidden in the repetitive character of many riffs, but the group makes everything more frantic and adrenaline-charged, managing to draw inspiration from acts as different as Mudvayne, A Perfect Circle and Opeth to forge something new, also weaving multiple sections or different refrains into the same song. The result is sui generis, proving innovative within the Swedish metal scene, to the point of instantly making the work of several contemporary bands feel dated.

Much angrier and heavier than its predecessors, the album follows a loose concept about loneliness, revenge, depression and crime, at times adopting the point of view of an unspecified character, ideally identified with Jonas Renkse himself, who offers reflections and monologues on the situations he faces. The lyrics are far less poetic and refined than in the past, at times simplistic. On the other hand, Renkse's vocal confidence has grown, his clean singing having now reached full artistic maturity and self-awareness, almost a kind of metallic Jeff Buckley. The whole album ultimately flows cohesively and at a consistently high level: the shadowy "Sleeper", caught between dark-rock, nu-metal and doom-metal; the slow, anguished "A Premonition", perhaps the album's peak of despair (“Keep it quiet here I will not tolerate your noise/ This is where I listen for the forgiving voice/ It haunts my dreams”); the furious "Will I Arrive" and "Wealth"; the macabre, apocalyptic midtempo of "One Year From Now"; the syncopations of "Walking By A Wire", which spill into a goth-metal streaked with crossover; and the '80s-tinged "Complicity", with its contrast between furious gothic guitar walls and stark, repetitive keyboards.

The album's masterpieces are probably "Criminals", with its icy, searing guitars, piercing bass and a chorus that's alienating in sound yet memorable in its lyrics (“So gather your strength and break free/ Or you will surely die/ Gather your strength don’t follow me/ Cause I will surely die”); "Burn The Remembrance", with its ethnic percussion and interwoven searing guitars and accompanying electronic melodies; and then the moving "Evidence", a dark-tinged alt-metal track that narrates the separation of two lovers after a lie-detector test and leans heavily on the bittersweet atmospheres conjured by the guitars. The closing instead is handled by the combination of the acoustic ballad "Omerta", abruptly cut off to catch the listener off guard, and the instrumental "Inside The City Of Glass", spectral, anguished and terrifying, with deeply distorted doom riffs. But the whole record sounds cohesive and consistently excellent.

With Viva Emptiness, Katatonia created their masterpiece, yet they still weren't fully satisfied with it, particularly regarding the production: so ten years later they released a special anniversary edition, completely remastered. The sound changes, the drums become fuller and punchier, the keyboards are brought more to the fore, the atmospheres grow less dense and dry, darker and icier, placing the record in a new and intriguing light (a vocal part is also added to the closing "Inside The City Of Glass"). Both versions are available on Spotify.

Meanwhile, several compilations are released: Brave Yester Day covers the band's early years up to 1998, while Black Sessions covers the period up to 2004, also adding several previously unreleased tracks that had appeared either on EPs or as bonus tracks on special editions of earlier albums. Among the unreleased tracks, the most successful are probably "Wait Outside", which blends goth-rock, nu-metal and Black-Sabbath-style doom riffs, and the gloomy acoustic ballad "O How I Enjoy the Light", a Will Oldham cover.

The band's new guise is further explored and developed in 2006 with The Great Cold Distance, which marks a further evolution. Less jarring but more polished in its arrangements than its predecessor, it also sounds more "American" in its riffing. What immediately stands out is the warm, meticulous production, rich in sonic counterpoints, atmospheric effects (strictly analogue, not digital), and background guitar or bass phrasing that pervades the listening experience. Far removed are the days of the raw, spare, minimal, deliberately lo-fi productions of the mid-90s (unfortunately, this attention to detail isn't replicated in a live setting).

The four minutes that mark the album's opening belong entirely to "Leaders", the track that perhaps most recalls the previous album, in which the guitars dart over a quivering, tenaciously precarious emotional foundation, upon which the album's poetics rest. A tension that only eases at the very end, with the possible redemption (or rather, dissolution) of "Journey Through Pressure". A certain shifting of moods (skillfully mirrored by the unsettling artwork) pervades - though without ever bridging - the distance separating anguish from serenity.

Thus, in a calculated alternation of distorted episodes among the most incisive and powerful in the Swedish band's entire output ("Consternation"), nu/prog assaults ("Rusted") and fleeting, intimately-tinged arpeggios ("In The White"), the band crafts a tracklist of many faces, at times fusing hardcore elements ("July"), dark touches ("Follower", with a nod to Linkin Park if they were gothic and decadent) and crossover ("Soil's Song") into a hybrid blend that upends the principles of Scandinavian metal.

In its central section, the album concentrates its aggressive soul. "Increase" and "July" reinforce the sense that Daniel Liljekvist's drumming has grown, never so powerful and precise, almost Tool-like, while "In The White" serves as the record's landing maneuver. The closing trio of tracks eases the fears and anxieties built up through the awareness of an infinite solitude. The fade-out of "Journey Through Pressure", somewhere between A Perfect Circle and Cure, leaves the exploration suspended in a paranoid void - a dark oblivion where the only strangeness is touching another human being's hand.

The album is a fine meeting point between American alternative-metal and a typically Scandinavian sensibility; it marks the peak of popularity reached up to that point by Katatonia, who start popping up in the major European charts and seeing interview requests pour in from all sides. Unfortunately, this attention also comes with considerable pressure, causing the Swedes to openly admit to a creative block: they go into the studio, record new tracks, but remain unsatisfied with them; they go back into the studio, come out with more material, and each time start all over again.

This block carries on until November 2009 when, finally satisfied with the material they'd written, they release Night Is The New Day. It is perhaps their most carefully crafted album to date in terms of arrangements and production, skilfully blending traditional instruments with accompanying keyboards and electronic touches that never overstep their bounds. It might also be their most stylistically varied album, since it reworks and consolidates the stylistic traits the band had developed, occasionally dipping back into the past and filtering it through their new outlook. But it's also the album where a hint of mannerism starts to creep into the songs, leading to a certain unevenness in the results.

The experience the band has built up allows them to write some of the best songs of their career: the opener "Forsaker", with its intimate, emotional sound, riff panzer halfway between Meshuggah and Tool, all of it steeped in an atmospheric, decadent goth-rock (“Rage from a distance/ The name unfamiliar/ Spikes reach the heart/ Time set for rewind”); the single "The Longest Year", with its stirring, fiery chorus; or the superb "Liberation", built on aggressive, scorching riffs, nocturnal downbeat interludes, hushed vocals and alienating digressions. Also notable is the funereal, old-school doom of "Nephilim", especially for how it stands apart from the other tracks, with Renkse sounding more pained than usual over desolate arpeggios (partly recalling the atmospheres of Tiamat's "Mount Marilyn"). But the psychedelic dark-rock of "Inheritance" sounds as appealing as it is formulaic, while "Idle Blood" is an acoustic ballad that owes too much to Opeth, and "Day & Then The Shade" rests on a riff too similar to countless post-grunge acts (of this last track, perhaps the more successful version is Frank Default's remix, which turns it into a piano-and-synth ballad à-la Kraftwerk, albeit monotonous in the long run).

Overall, there are moments where it feels like listening to one hybrid too many of Opeth, Porcupine Tree and A Perfect Circle, always well crafted, sure, but not quite as striking as their previous records. Either way, the production highlights the band's compositional refinement and elegance, even surpassing the previous album in that respect. The moods are far more twilight-toned, reflective and considered, as if after the "release" that followed their most depressive albums, the time had now come to stop and take stock. In any case, it's a transitional work, alternating light and shade.

New changes and new perspectives

Almost immediately after the album's release, the two Norrman brothers announce their departure from the band in the friendliest, most wistful terms possible, as they want to stay close to their families, and grueling tours combined with the economic downturn aren't doing musicians any favors. Taking their place are Per Eriksson (already the band's sound engineer) on guitar and Niklas Sandin on bass.

Three years later comes Dead End Kings, a follow-up and natural continuation of their recent albums. Compared to its predecessor, stylistically it marks an evolution toward something more rock and less metal, and above all more detached from those pronounced doom elements that would occasionally resurface, sometimes quite directly: the album tends to push the "metallic" side into the background (at least rhythmically and atmospherically) to focus on the soft, "gothic" side, itself taking a slightly less dramatic, more intimate and melancholic approach. The main difference lies mostly in the overall balance of the tracklist, which shows somewhat more linear and uniform songs, even if it seems to lack the most thrilling, direct highlights. And yet the opening track, "The Parting", seems to suggest something different, with its scorching riffs punctuated by melancholic digressions of minimal keyboard, strings and steady drumming.

Digging deeper into the record, you can sense how the soft elements are better blended and the metallic ones less pronounced and more nuanced, with well-defined tracks such as the alienating "Hypnone", the introverted, heavily effected "The Racing Heart" (one of the album's best tracks and an expression of a deeply melancholic sense of loneliness), or "Leech", with its Radiohead-like spleen and bittersweet contrast between melody and darkness.

Other moments, like the successful mental trip of "Undo You", are entirely outside metal territory. The weakest track is perhaps the catchy "The One You Are Looking For Is Not Here" (with backing vocals from Silje Wergeland of The Gathering), very catchy but a bit coarse. Naturally, the Swedish band's trademark is instantly recognizable here, with its dark catchiness and the care put into the arrangements, always evocative, biting and finely polished, with a character that even brushes up against progressive territory. Part of these moods is also thanks to Frank Default's keyboard contributions, never overbearing but an excellent complement to the sounds Renkse (author of almost all the songs on the album by himself) and Nyström are aiming to evoke. The most important role, though, remains Renkse's, as ever extremely emotional and expressive, and the author of deeply felt lyrics. What disappoints slightly is the lack of any real surprises or jolts, but that can be considered acceptable after a 20-year career that has already seen plenty of changes.

The album is reissued a few months later in a fully acoustic version titled Dethroned & Uncrowned. It's a controversial work, one that forgoes any hint of metal, bending instead toward a melancholic, twilight form of ballad, cradled by dialogues between purely acoustic instruments, in a kind of blend between understated pop and the most accessible dark-folk. A recipe that's refined in itself, and one from which some tear-jerking gems emerge, such as the reworkings of the livid "The Racing Heart", the evanescent "Hypnone", the more esoteric "Buildings" and the colorful "Undo You".

Problems arise, however, once the whole thing is put to the test of a full listen: although free of any glaring missteps and decidedly cohesive, an eleven-track tracklist — moreover adapted rather than built from scratch in this form — that keeps dwelling on the same formula ends up falling into an impasse that inevitably leads to boredom.

In spring 2014, the limited-edition compilation Kocytean is also released, gathering the main unreleased tracks written during the period of the last three albums, which, as usual, had appeared either on EPs or as bonus tracks on the albums themselves. For better or worse, they all differ from the main style of the albums they were associated with, which is why they were released separately — they would otherwise have clashed with the overall balance of the actual full-length records. It's certainly an interesting proposition for fans of the band, since it collects unreleased tracks that would otherwise only have been found by hunting down separate minis, probably no longer available, or the limited editions of the full albums. In our view, it's a shame that "Displaced" and "Dissolving Bonds", from the 2005 "My Twin" EP, are missing. In truth, the whole matter is of fairly relative importance, since between streaming services and simply buying the songs digitally, everything has long been easily accessible. Still, we recommend giving this release a listen, less for its otherwise decent content than for the interesting detour it represents, with a few songs that really grab your attention. Worth singling out above all is "Unfurl", taken from the 2006 "July" EP, an interesting detour into trip-hop territory for the Swedes. The arrangement is somewhat by-the-numbers but well suited to the dark, nocturnal, deeply melancholic mood; particularly striking are the chorus (the metaphorical lyrics allow for multiple readings, seeming to refer as much to the awareness of death as to the relief brought by love or drugs), the overdriven bass and the faint guitar brushstrokes in the background. Then there's the introverted, aggressive goth-nu-metal of "Ashen", released on the 2011 reissue of Night Is the New Day (together with "Sold Heart"). It alternates faint, depressive passages, in the band's usual trademark style, with harder, more energetic guitar bursts. The lyrics are vengeful and minimal, apparently referring to a friendship that betrayed the protagonist after psychologically taking advantage of his fragility. "Sold Heart", on the other hand, is a languid, very faint ballad, marked only by guitar arpeggios, sparse electronic effects and light downbeat drumming, which speaks of the sense of emptiness left by the end of a love affair, albeit without any particular lyrical inspiration.

At this point, Katatonia proper is reduced to just Renkse (at the same time the author of a less-than-happy excursion into alt-prog territory alongside Bruce Soord of Pineapple Thief) and Nyström, since Liljekvist too reluctantly announces that he has to leave the band, having stated outright that he can't pay his bills with music alone. His replacement is Daniel Moilanen of doomsters Runemagick. In the meantime, Per Eriksson also leaves after just one album, as his work commitments had taken him to Barcelona and he could no longer fit them around Katatonia's activities. Taking his place instead is Roger Öjersson (from the blues/stoner trio Kamchatka).

In an effort to cope with these difficulties, the Swedes go back into the studio in autumn 2015, releasing The Fall Of Hearts in May 2016, marking the debut of the new recruits. And they're far from mere session players: Moilanen is a talented, never-excessive drummer, who keeps time with ease both in the calmest passages and the most aggressive ones, while Öjersson's bluesy touches enrich the arrangements, giving them a splash of color; but, all things considered, the real core of Katatonia by now consists solely of founders Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström, who, despite the recent line-up changes, still shoulder all of the composing and production. Throughout the album, you can feel the lingering influence of the unplugged episodes, not only of Dethroned & Uncrowned but also of the live album Sanctitude, which offered new, more minimal and acoustic versions of their songs.

These episodes influenced the writing of the songs, with numerous hushed moments free of electric guitars, alternating with decisive but never violent riffs, or emotional climaxes that are never overly distorted. Plenty of room is given to purely acoustic moments, as in "Pale Flag" or the ballad "Decima" — which, however, is likewise underpinned by filler keyboards. The lyrical content, meanwhile, stays true to Jonas Renkse's usual introspective, personal standards.

This interplay of variations within the same songs helps build an autumnal atmosphere, marked by nods to progressive-rock (while Tool remain a touchstone for the band, you can also sense a slight influence of Steven Wilson and latter-day Opeth) and to gothic-rock, as if The Cure met Pink Floyd and got produced like latter-day Anathema.

The album's main strength, by now a trademark of the band for the past decade and in stark contrast to their sparse, bare-bones productions of the past, is as usual the arrangements, crafted down to the smallest detail and enriched with subtle sonic counterpoints that embellish the atmosphere: little gems on the album like "Residual", with its sweet arpeggios alternating with dark syncopated riffs; the harrowing "The Night Subscriber"; or the solos of the closing "Passer". The main flaw, which had already surfaced before, is paradoxically that same meticulous attention to arrangement, which at times results in moments that are polished, well played and well mixed in production, but built on few ideas and tending toward repetitiveness.

The same bittersweet atmospheres swing between sincere emotional passion and mannerism, and Renske's vocals are heartfelt but one-dimensional. Among the most significant examples, we'd point to the emotional sobs of "Old Hearts Falls", the hazy, seventies-style ballad "Shifts" (at times almost psychedelic), or the long apocalyptic stretches of "Serac", very expressive but perhaps drawn out a bit too much. These are all well-performed and well-arranged tracks, achieving notable results in building atmosphere, but lacking the genuine creative expressiveness of the past.

After 4 years, here's the second album in a row written entirely by Jonas Renkse, with a title that says it all: City Burials. This time the more prog-leaning tendencies are set aside somewhat in favor of remixing the ingredients. The approach becomes more immediate, gravitating above all around a leaden, modern pathos and Renkse's melancholic voice. The atmospheres are decidedly nocturnal, with urban, decadent moods, tempered by a catchy streak.

The selection explores different coordinates, but a common thread runs through all of them: moments brushing against a hazy, urban progressive streak remain, with polyrhythms and sophisticated touches inserted here and there as ornaments; but at the same time we get a batch of tracks reaffirming the band's more emotional dark alternative-rock/metal pedigree, others that recall bands halfway between hard & heavy and goth-rock (like 69 Eyes or late-period Sentenced), and still others that find a more atmospheric and electronic dimension, in a fairly pronounced way that is almost unprecedented for Katatonia. 

None of the songs, taken individually, introduces any absolute novelty or reshapes the scene, but the final result still sounds different from what the Swedes had shown before. There are no exceptional peaks, but nothing falls flat either.

In 2023 the Swedes return with a new album bearing a grim, if perhaps slightly trite, title: Sky Void of Stars. The songwriting stays in line with the pattern of the last decade, built around melancholic yet catchy melodies, where the sense of pain is put in service of atmosphere and emotion. The arrangements, while keeping the usual attention to sonic detail, become heavier than on the previous City Burials, recovering a distorted edge close to Night Is the New Day and also to the classic The Great Cold Distance, but rather than emphasizing the drama of today's urban civilization and spectral moods, the new work builds on the more romantic, intimate approach established starting with Dead End Kings.

The album might raise some initial skepticism, but it actually proves solid and dignified. Among the best moments is first and foremost "Colossal Shade", with its subtle yet sharp riffs accompanying Jonas Renkse's compelling vocal lines, a master at combining radio-friendliness with bitterness, let down only by how much it recalls, in places, the 2009 track "The Longest Year". Then there's the bittersweet "Opaline", a power ballad that serves as catharsis at the crossroads of pop-rock, goth and metal. "Drab Moon" also grabs attention with its skillful balance of dark atmospheres, evocative sonic touches, and guitar flourishes. "Author" is perhaps the darkest point of the record, led by Jonas Renkse's pained voice in an enveloping performance. Toward the end, "Sclera" is tear-jerking, while "Atrium" is delicate and overwhelming at once. 

The rest of the album navigates these coordinates with balance, offering decent, honest songs, borderline unremarkable but inoffensive, with only minor repetitions. Guest Joel Ekelöf of Soen comes across as a bit melodramatic on "Impermanence". Renkse remains the standout as always, vocally impeccable, and the author of some of the most mature and heartfelt lyrics of his career.

Katatonia found their definitive formula long ago, with an immediately recognizable personal stamp, albeit at the cost of no longer taking the risks they once did. At first glance they might seem like a more metallic, less decadent Cure, or, for anyone wanting to split hairs, a bridge between Fields of the Nephilim and Paradise Lost with occasional hints somewhere between Porcupine Tree and Evanescence. But in reality it's always Katatonia, even after so many years, a few significant turning points, and a steady, ultimately coherent evolution of their style.

What varies are the details and the quality of individual songs, here on Sky Void of Stars well crafted, though not quite a masterpiece – which, frankly, would be a pretentious thing to expect. But anyone looking for surprising flashes, or who doesn't appreciate their recent approach, will find them by now too self-indulgent and mellowed out.

The constant, even compared to past albums, is that our heroes once again portray lives defeated by their own inescapable fate, decayed scenarios, moments of everyday alienation, gusts of scorching sadness, exhausting inner torments, the relentless grip of senseless suffering. And, as always, they recognize in life's irreversible transience the only admissible certainty.

Contributions by Emilio Saturnini ("The Great Cold Distance"), Vincenzo Gaglioti (conclusion, from "Dead End Kings") and Matteo Meda ("Dethroned & Uncrowned")  

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

Share on

This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition