The idea of finding out that your favourite band has just called it quits is nothing short of terrifying, if your praised band has not already done so since the 90s. For many of us, these frightening ideas became true around the end of 2017, when long-running melancholic outfit Katatonia dropped a bomb on their Facebook site, announcing the band was pulling the plug. However, the band kept hundreds of fans from taking their lives, clarifying that this was not the definite demise of Katatonia, they rather spoke about an indefinite hiatus the band was forced to take due to “recent issues and injury”. Whatever that meant only the band knew, but certainly an argument between the two brains of the Swedish band, Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström, was not involved in this. The two pals in darkness continued touring with Bloodbath, whose health was feared jeopardised after Katatonia’s shocking statement. Not only did Bloodbath headline several festivals around the globe during this period, they also dropped a new full-length album last year, with Paradise Lost’s Nick “old” Holmes leading the candles with his dark and miserable growls. The release of The Arrow of Satan Is Drawn by Bloodbath put an end to any conspiracy theory about a conflict between Renkse and Nyström. Quite a relief, isn’t it?
Earlier this year, while fans were still mourning Katatonia’s departure, the band posted a piece of artwork which was pretty much in the style of their Night is the New Day’s insert. “Come think of it, it’s been already 10 years since I received this CD by mail” I thought. Although the pace of time uses to play tricks on me, I was right: the following day Katatonia announced they were leaving their cryogenic chambers with their line-up surprisingly intact and they had set up an European tour called Night Comes Down on Europe to commemorate Night is the New Day’s 10th birthday. The band was to hit London’s Islington Assembly Hall to wrap up this tour. Getting hold of a ticket for this gig became compulsory!
Having been to only one gig in this venue before (The Eden House, 2017), I had blurred memories of its capacity and features. The Assembly Hall is quite a fancy place with a theatrical stage and an elegant balcony, even the fire exit is ornamented with golden details. Yep, you’ll feel like in your favourite Wetherspoons while hitting the bar. No doubt the venue went with the gothic music delivered by three-girl-fronted The Eden House that night of 2017. On a rough assessment, The Assembly Hall is a medium-capacity venue, larger than the Nambucca, Black Heart, Electrowerkz and dreadfully claustrophobic Underworld, but smaller than the Electric Ballroom and, of course, the Roundhouse. Katatonia’s gig was a rapid sold-out as expected. Considering the band’s growing popularity after their last output The Fall of Hearts (2015), I reckon Electric Ballroom would’ve been a more suitable venue to hold the tour’s grand finale. As far as the equipment goes, the Assembly Hall’s audio is not bad but even places like Camden’s Koko, offer a more pleasant ear experience, in my opinion. Technical issues happened in The Eden House’s gig and, guess, they came about again in Katatonia’s!
Two acts were invited to open Katatonia’s reanimation procedures in the tour’s entirety: rather obscure Wheel and the new folk rock/metal opus Cellar Darling. Being completely reckless, I didn’t give Wheel’s just-dropped debut album Moving Backwards (2019) a single spin before the gig, so I had no idea what my ears were to undergo. The 4-piece group turned up in hoodies, “oh yeah, organisers brought another hooded post-metal band to warm up things”, I irresponsibly reckoned before they played a single note, based on their appearance alone. Wheel kicked off fiercely with some Meshuggah-fuelled riffs, “oh yeah, organisers hired a generic djent band to warm up things”, I irresponsibly underestimated based on the starting riffs. I was completely wrong. Hooded Wheel turned out to be the second biggest surprise of the evening, after Katatonia’s second guitarist (I’ll explain in a bit). The four-piece far from being djent or post-whatever disposables, develop a convoluted style clearly influenced by Tool fame, but adding to the spell pot a few Meshuggah crumbs. The Meshuggah presence can be felt in their twisted rhythms rather than in the guitar tone, which is definitely not djent-oriented. Wheel’s recipe becomes interesting when putting into game some 90s grunge flavour, with Norwegian legends Seigmen surely making it to their ingredients list. The Finland-stablished Briton fronting the band delivered a jaw-dropping performance, arguably influenced by the angriest Maynard James Keenan which can be heard in Tool’s “Ticks and Leeches”. Furthermore, in a fairly shameless way, Wheel’s drummer based one of the songs performed that night on the mentioned Tool’s brilliant song. You can imagine it’s literally a pain to play these drums and after a 4-track setlist of flawless complex drumming, the Finnish musician was soaked in sweat. Not sure yet whether it’s the outcome of having few to none expectations from Wheel, but I checked their debut album when I came back home and haven’t got it away from my ears ever since.
Swiss trio Cellar Darling took the stage over for the second act of the night. Despite having known the band’s name since they joined Nuclear Blast’s elite rooster two years back, I never got into Cellar Darling’s unique prog/folk offering, the fact that the trio’s sound is led by Ana Murphy’s sweet voice, pulling down the guitar riffs, being a major downside for me. Nevertheless, I was surprised by some of the gig-attenders’ comments, for whom the logo of Cellar Darling in the concert’s poster was the only encouragement to buy tickets. Cellar Darling are big indeed, the crowd knew the lyrics and sang along to Ana’s remarkable presence on stage. This might sound like a naive and generic comment, but Ana’s singing style reminds me a lot of Anneke van Giersbergen in The Gathering’s heydays. Not only does Ana’s voice ring that bell, her vocal arrangements resemble Anneke’s, mostly in her Nighttime Birds (1997) era. This probably unfair comparison is not a drawback at all though. Ana proves her live performance flawlessly matches what in the studio recording can be heard, reaching the high notes of songs like extremely catchy “The Spell”. Of course, the band’s signature element is the enduring use of the perhaps Mediterranean instrument hurdy-gurdy. The incorporation of folkloric instruments in metal music is not a novelty at all, it is as simple as to have a listen to popular Eluveitie, which Cellar Darling used to be bandmates with. However, Cellar Darling’s music is less folk-ish, less atmospheric and more melody-oriented than the everyday folk metal bands in the stores’ shelves. This gives Cellar Darling a distinctive style and unique live experience, which we were able to witness and prove that very night.
Finally, it was time to bring back Katatonia from the dead. The execution of Night of the New Day in its entirety was scheduled.
TEN YEARS SINCE THE NEW DAY
Night is the New Day, contrary to the band’s comments on the tour’s motivation, was not critically acclaimed upon release a decade back, the album received mixed reviews to say the best. Night is the New Day was the follow-up to 2006’s The Great Cold Distance, which was a dynamic, cold (indeed) album. Night is the New Day saw Anders openly confessing his lack of urge and inspiration for dragging the pen and strumming the strings to compose new songs, leaving Jonas Renkse on his own in this, the most weary duty. As a consequence, the album lacks the marked Tool influence audible to the naked ear in The Great Cold Distance. Scarce yet noteworthy Anders’ screams are gone too. Nevertheless, it is Renkse’s decision of stopping relying on guitar pedalling as the main atmospheric element and thus overloading the album with keyboards what marks a breaking point on the evolution of Katatonia’s sound.
These changes were, however, mostly overlooked by the critics ten years back. Reviewers complained about the “monotonously and weakness” of the album, whose promotion campaign masterminded by Peaceville Records focused on the commentary from the band’s long-time friend Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth fame, who praised the album as “melancholic yet heavy” prior to its release. This, added to the band’s announcement of having written “a doom metal song inspired on Katatonia’s early material”, triggered speculation about Jonas Renkse being growling again and the release of a much darker and heavier album than The Great Cold Distance. Fans were nothing but disappointed after noticing the clearly atmospheric nature of Night is the New Day. I actually find The Great Cold Distance a much heavier effort. The supposed doom metal song was simply a downtempo track with dark-ish abstract lyrics, all clean vocals.
Despite the growing discomfort from the fans, Night is the New Day was my favourite album of 2009. Jonas Renkse level of inspiration in his song-writing easily pairs any of the band’s previous releases. I believe Peaceville’s campaign gushing about the heaviness of the album was definitively a mistake. Night is the New Day is not about heaviness, it’s about the melancholy that Jonas Renkse drenches the record with, resulting in a constantly dark atmosphere which the band has not been able to pair since then. I always think this album is to Katatonia as A Map of All Our Failures (2011) was for My Dying Bride, an album that many fans found boring due to its dominant downtempo sections but that can be considered as one of the saddest albums these British doomsters ever wrote.
Night is the New Day also marked the departure of the Norrman brothers who went to reactivate October Tide, putting an end to the, in my perspective, classic line-up of the band. Drummer Daniel Liljekvist would follow an album later. I even stopped keeping an eye to Katatonia’s line-up as the band has undergone even more recent modifications. Three years later, Katatonia dropped Night is the Newday’s follow-up, Dead End Kings, which would pave the path to a more progressive-rock-oriented sound, this time not being the Tool’s riffs which haunted Renkse and Nyström’s minds, but probably new Opeth and people from aristocratic label Kscope, like Steve Wilson. Katatonia’s last album The Fall of Hearts (2015) would see the band’s return to the favourable reviews, marking their first popularity burst since utterly catchy “My Twin” hat the radio in 2006. The Fall of Hearts was also the first Katatonia album I didn’t buy. The band has now become too progressive for my ears which are more used to a rawer and less buff melancholy.
I saw Katatonia live in Mexico City in 2011 while the band was still touring for Night is the New Day. The bootleg posters, tees and other merch sold outside the venue still pictured the classic line-up in spite the musicians playing inside the venue being others. In that memorable gig, Katatonia put on a rather dark show with a clearly (emotionally) decayed Jonas Renkse resembling the presence on stage of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons. We were lucky enough to witness the band performing death/doom metal classic tracks “Without God” and “Murder”, yep, I’m one of the few fortunate blokes who had managed to see Jonas Renkse growling live.
NIGHT COMES DOWN OVER THE STAGE
Moving back to 2019 in Islington Assembly Hall, Katatonia jumped on stage kicking off with the album’s opening track “Forsaker”, the most energetic song and first single off the album. The Meshuggah-influenced riffs resonated loudly with the great acoustics and equipment of the venue. Jonas Renkse’s voice sounded as unique as usual. Besides Jonas and Anders, the stage is dwelled by Runemagick’s Daniel Moilanen behind the drumkit, Niklas Sandin on bass and Tiamat’s Roger Öjersson on second guitar. The latter fella being the biggest surprise of the night as I already warned before: The album’s most emotional track is “Departer” whose studio version featured the unique high-pitched vocals of Swedish solo musician Krister Linder. The big question was whether Renkse was to sing Linder’s lines which seemed a futile endeavour as their voices are extremely different. Well, it was guitarist Roger Öjersson who stepped in to replicate Linder’s intervention. The result was breath-taking, still giving me the goosebumps I got the very first time I listened Krister Linder singing such a poignant and sad song in the studio version.
The atmospheric mood of Night is the New Day reaches a 4-track long low starting with sixth track “The Promise of Deceit” and being only broken by second-to-last “The Day and The Shade”, just to fall again in total gloom with “Departer”. This makes the album particularly not-suitable for a gig as the crowd may get bored if they don’t love each of these songs and are unable to sing along or if they are not depressed. This was unavoidable with Jonas forced to warn the attendees “the following one is a ballad…” and, right before the single “The Day and Then the Shade”, “we come back to rock and roll!”. This was not a problem for me at all, as I had the best of times listening live to these songs that have stuck to my head for 10 years now. In fact, I found people clapping during these four quiet songs a bit inadequate as they seemed to break the sad atmosphere.
The biggest uncertainty of the night was what the band was going to offer as encore. Night is the New Day runs for less than 50 minutes, which ensures at least one encore. I kept expectations not too high, I was not expecting to be lucky enough to get to hear some death/doom metal that night or even my favourite song “Tonight’s Music”, which I’ve never seen live. Katatonia returned to the stage after Roger Öjersson had broken everyone’s heart with closing “Departer”. In a rather natural fashion, they played a song from each of their two most recent full-length albums, The Fall of Hearts and Dead End Kings, and probably the most interesting song in the setlits: The Great Cold Distance’s “July”, which almost triggered a moshpit among the excited crowd. The band had a last track to close the tour, a Judas Priest cover, “Night Comes Down”. Unfortunately, I have an opinion on covers in live shows. Specially when you have a 4-song encore, you have a sold out show and you have an 11-album catalogue. It would’ve been interesting if the band had decided to keep on sharing 10-year-old memories and had kept loyal to Night is the New Day by playing any of the two bonus tracks of the album, “Ashen” and “Sold Heart”. I had a bit of the same feeling I had last time I saw Anathema live, who have to think twice before drafting their setlist as they have released 13 studio albums and ticket holders have hopes of listening to their faves live. However, Anathema slapped our faces with three Pink Floyd covers.
Katatonia is alive, trust me, I witnessed it with my eyes. The fact of having the Sweden masters of melancholy back is quite a pleasant feeling. Not only did this gig show the band is back to life, it also proved they work perfectly under their late line-up changes. As far as I know, no comments have been made yet as on whether the band has plans for hitting the studio. On the other hand, Katatonia already announced dates for several festivals which, hopefully, indicates this comeback was not a one-tour stand. What is currently spinning on Renkse and Nyström’s turntables inspiring their song-writing? Will the band resume their prog stage or will they overtake it? Will they sign with Kscope should they continue embracing prog rock? Only time will tell, but we’ll keep our eyes open for news and our ears open too for keeping on listening the stunning legacy the band has left us so far.
-PABLO CUSTODIO
