Viva Emptiness

I really hate Katatonia for putting out 2 albums in a row with grey covers. This might not seem like such a big deal to most people, but I have mild synaesthesia so my senses overlap a little bit, especially in the realm of words, colours, and music. For example, if I read a page of a book, I don't only get an impression of what is going on in the story, my mind also follows the colours of words and makes an entirely different impression. I know it's not good advice to judge a book (or an album) by its cover; however, I tend to at least remember albums by their covers. If I think of a visual representation of the songs on the album, 9 times out of 10 it's the cover, and if I see that cover I mostly think of the music it describes. But that's more or less the conventional idea of album artwork, right? It should look like the music sounds. I tend to go a bit further though. It's great for me when a band uses a different concept (like Mastodon's suite of "elemental" albums) or very distinct images (the variations of Eddie and Vic on Iron Maiden and Megadeth releases) for each album. With colours, it's more complicated. Katatonia put out a pink album, a purple album, an orange album, a blue album, a grey album, and then this, another grey album. Whenever I think of Tonight's Decision, I can hear it's blueness. I remember Brave Murder Day and I remember it in purple. Last Fair Deal Gone Down is chrome grey.

And Viva Emptiness is also grey. That would make it the same as the previous album, which would be a real shame for a band like Katatonia who developed so prodigiously over their first decade. I wouldn't blame the band particularly because there is surely a niche for this kind of low-key, emotional progressive metal and Katatonia can fill that niche. Notice that I don't say "depressive" or gothic. Katatonia aren't gothic and have rarely flirted with the style, nor are they doom any more, but depressive is an odd tag - surely that's not a style, that's a mood? This is the point where you'll be glad you read through my rambling introduction. Depressive (or depressing might be more apt) is just one colour. Katatonia are about so much more than one single mood or style: they pack in pop and modern prog and radio rock and a big dose of heaviness that goes beyond the guitar tuning and lively drumming. To notice all this, you have to go past the general greyness or a tag like depressive and get into the actual songs.

'Sleeper', for example, comes in on pretty clean strummed chords and ethereal backing keyboards, which welcome Jonas Renkse's smooth, ghostly vocals; a driving, stomping riff marches in, then explodes into climactic dissonant guitar, behind which a piano lurks, Renkse warning in a worryingly strained voice; a quiet and nostalgic drift like a breeze across the back garden of your childhood; a sudden final crash of drums and the ultimatum "You - die - now".

'Burn the Remembrance' is another beast entirely. It floats and bounces with delicious laziness, a kind of tribal hand-drum rhythm underpinning everything; a strange riff gently scrapes across this backing, Anders Nyström fires off an airily light solo; Renkse slips into the mood of these riffs, before we get the solo again; then the really fun part: a slightly muted riff snarls and rips at its restraints, circling round and round (it's a treat in headphones) while tin-can drumming builds up behind it; the whole band set off together on the back of that spiralling riff, turning the final minute of the song into a sprawling psychedelic swirl of noise and soothing vocals.

Those 2 songs are perhaps the highlights, but that would be forgetting the diversity of the remaining songs and their powerful narrative pull. Everything on Viva Emptiness is shifting and sprawling without being overlong or indulgent, nor do the band fail to include some soaring up-tempo choruses, which are more instantly accessible than any of their earlier efforts. As a result, the album isn't quite as concentrated or consistent as the previous couple, though Katatonia's ability to make music and lyrics as constant outsiders is never under threat.

There's no way of telling someone who hasn't listened to Katatonia what they sound like and they don't really have a fixed sound either, but they do write songs absolutely crammed with original ideas, all of which are stamped with the unique marks of Anders Nyström's guitar and Jonas Renkse's vocals. Renkse becomes a stronger presence with each subsequent album, having fully sorted out the problems caused by his transition from harsh to clean vocals a few years before this release. His relaxed vocals in the verses have a wonderful ease and smoothness to them, which belies a level of difficulty when singing over Nyström's less conventional riffs, while he gives more to the choruses than he could even contemplate on Tonight's Decision, actually making the overall mood less melancholy. His lyrics are often poetic, turning songs into snapshots of a detailed story. The other instrumentalists shine through occasionally on Viva Emptiness, though the album is marked more by the excessive coupling of different elements and experimentation with rhythm and style that makes the band move as a single strange entity.

Viva Emptiness is not quite Katatonia's best (a lot of arguments about that one) or most interesting album (likewise), though it is probably their most representative release. Most of the elements that the band are known for - barring the early doom leanings - are present and well-developed, the songs offer the best diversity of their career, and there are plenty of signposts that led the band on to their next few albums. Katatonia are never going to stagnate exactly, but this is the album that marked the beginning of the current era in the band's sound and, like all the other eras, it sounds like no one else.