Night Is the New Day

I met Katatonia’s music when I got Viva Emptiness in a random buy (I tend to do that sometimes). I quickly became a fan of the band after listening to it and then The Great Cold Distance (being these two my favorite albums and the ones I will compare this new album to the most). Later the other albums (except the first two ones) kicked in as well. So I had BIG expectations for the new album plus there was a lot of hype from the band on how they had written the “heaviest” songs and then the mini-site, etc, but when it finally came out… well read on.

The album opens with Forsaker, which was the first and only song they let everybody listen to before the album came out. At first I was not quite into this song, but it grew on me as I waited for the whole thing. It has very catchy riffs and a powerful chorus as well as some very good synths. The second track is as good as Forsaker, it shares the same songwriting. So far I was convinced this would be another good album, until “Idle Blood” began. I am going to describe this song in one word (yes, you guessed right): Opeth. Now, most people would say “Opeth?, cool!.” Well I did not mean the good Opeth, this track sounds like a Deliverance out-take that didn’t make it for being repetitive and boring. Jonas (the singer) does not even sound like him, I swear that I mistake him for Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth’s singer) in this song. This is a slow-driven tune with clean guitars, repetitive drums and no hook at all. From this point, the rest of the listener can follow a pattern throughout the album: on heavy song, one slow song, one heavy song, one slow song, and so on. This make’s the album too cyclic and kind of cliché since one can predict the next song. There are three mediocre songs right in the middle of the album, which are tracks 4, 6 and 7. Concerning the good songs, riffs are quite interesting, but not as heavy or creative as in Viva Emptiness and The Great Cold Distance [now on: VE and TGCD]. Vocals are quite good too, but there are no growls at all. Bass is there… and drums are kind of weak. I do not know what happened to the band’s drummer in this album but it seems like he lost all his magic. I remember quite well his fills in VE and TGCD … well that is not here. One thing that is kind of annoying in most of the songs is that he keeps playing the hi-hat off-beat. That is quite a good technique, but only if you use it for certain parts, not in almost every song…

Some words on the bad and the mediocre tracks. The songs I cannot stand are tracks 3, 9 and 11. These songs are all very similar, as I said before, slow songs, clean guitars, very mellow and boring! It is really hard to explain the frustration I feel when I listen to them, but if that was their goal, they have no doubt succeeded in doing so. Honestly, these feel like filler songs. I think they might have made the trick in a 15/16-song album where the extra 3/4 songs are really good, but in this album, these slow and boring songs come too often, and they kill the vibe that the catchy ones had created. About the mediocre songs (tracks 4, 6, 7), they all share the same formula: verses are like on the bad ones and choruses are as powerful as in the enjoyable ones. So expect the following: heavy or slow intro, slow verse (clean arpeggios), heavy chorus, slow verse, heavy chorus, etc. That is why I feel these songs are just OK; they seem to be half-way to being great. It is like they had a good idea but then were too lazy to finish it.

Let’s talk about production. As usual, Katatonia has always had great shit in the production department; this album is not the exception. Guitars’ tone is as good as in VE and TGCD, pretty crunchy and distorted, yet clear enough to be understandable. There are a lot of clean electric guitars which sound really good as usual, plus some acoustic guitars (on Idle Blood, for example) that sound great too. Bass is there making everything fat enough. Drums are quite tight and full, nice sounding, specially the snare drum. Vocals sound quite well too. There are some synths and effects as usual which make some songs a little more interesting.

Finally, one last thing, I remember reading in Katatonia’s website before the album came out that they said they had written some of their heaviest and most melodic stuff (or something similar). Well, there is no song heavier than the songs in VE and TGCD and probably not even heavier than songs in the rest of their albums. There are heavy songs, yeah, but not “the heaviest songs” when compared to the rest of Katatonia’s music. I guess the other part of that sentence is true. Oh, get the bonus track, it is a nice song that no-one should miss considering how many boring songs this album has. Too bad they switched the order and put it as track 11, leaving “Departer” as track 12, which is a great way to kill an album (it is one of the boring songs). I have always thought that an album has to have 3 pillars: one of the best songs has to be in the beginning of the album (to capture the listeners attention), another good song has to be in the middle (to keep him/her focused and interested) and the last song has to be really good or even as good as the other two mentioned (to give the album good closure)