You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.
You could describe Katatonia as many things across their career. Scrappy death-doom upstarts in the early-to-mid-90s, goth metal miserabilists at the turn of the millennium, then prog metal maestros starting with 2006’s The Great Cold
Distance. One description you’d seldom use is “budding comedians”. And in fairness, with Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State, you still probably wouldn’t.
But there’s a pointed sense of humour at points of Nightmares... that offsets their career-long penchant for melancholia. Ish. It’s worth noting that this is the first Katatonia album without co-founder and guitarist Anders Nyström, who officially announced his departure from the group barely a month before the album was announced. Anders attributed his departure to creative differences with vocalist Jonas Renkse – namely that the band’s earlier material was being neglected.
So how do Katatonia open their 13th studio album? With four seconds of crashing, calamitous heft that could’ve been on their debut. Jonas, you cad. It’s not the only nod to their metal past Katatonia make on Nightmares... On Wind Of No Change Jonas channels fellow Swedes Ghost with croons of ‘Hail Satan’, while the song’s lumbering opening bass could be cousins with From The Pinnacle To The Pit.
These are passing fancies, however, in an album that largely sees Katatonia stay the course. There’s still an elegiac beauty to their melodies, and a placid misery that is beguiling and oddly comforting. Glimpses of vibrance arise, be it in the thump of opener Thrice, the symphonic swells of Temporal and The Light Which I Bleed, or the trip hop electronica of Efter Solen.
But without the flair of Sky Void Of Stars highlights Austerity or Birds, the darkness prevails in a sombre, at times overly familiar tone that undercuts any sense that Nightmares... is a rebirth or reinvention. Then again, they hardly need another.
Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State is out this Friday, June 6. Order an exclusive vinyl and hand-signed art card bundle via the official Metal Hammer store.
