Katatonia | ‘Night is the New Day’

With daylight hours growing ever shorter and the sight of rain streaming under streetlights growing ever more common, Katatonia could hardly have chosen a better time of year to release their latest effort.

2006’s ‘The Great Cold Distance’ was the sound of a band almost fully at home with their evolved brand of dark rock, boasting a slick and powerful production and a more than healthy selection of tracks showing how the band that had firmly come into their own, almost revelling in their consistancy in the songwriting department.

Now being pretty much lightyears from their early Doom/Death roots, there could be little doubting that they’d mastered the sort of lush, melodic heavy rock that they’d been brushing up against from ‘Viva Emptiness’ onwards. 

This new one hints at what’s inside with its cover art, as the band has sucessfully managed to infuse a lot of smooth and dark atmosphere into the music. In more than one sense, the group has held down the style that the previous album typified, but in some ways almost relaxed the tempo.

The hefty, chugging opener of ‘Forsaker’, while certainly being enjoyable, is a curveball if ever there is one, as album simply doesn’t get that heavy again. 

The real character of the record begins to become apperant on the subsequent ‘The Longest Year’, as an almost Depeche Mode use of synthes and a lenghty, almost relaxed vocal hook digs its way into the listener’s mind. It’s an early highlight, and contains all the elements that characterises the band’s best aspects.

Castillo and Renkse’s production is both deep and rich and is utilised to its full potential. The way the track flows beautifully through a good pair of speakers, jumping from jagged guitar outbreaks to the key-laden chorus makes it hard to imagine how they could have handled it better. This is the Katatonia of 2009 in their element, able to pen the sort of velvet-edged rock in a way that completely grabs the listener’s mind.

The album nonetheless follows the trend of their last three in being very much uniform in song length, with a raft of four minute rockers populating the album. ‘Nephilim’, an obvious nod to McCoy and Co with its crooning refrain, is a good example of how they manage to give each of these tracks a real sense of indentity.

The dominanace of the keys once again come to the fore here, and it’s noticiable how significantly the guitars are pushed into the background, thankfully without really impacting the weight of the record in any real way. Perusing the booklet, it’s obvious Renkse is still in the same ballpark as usual with the lyrics (with the great chorus to ‘Liberation’ being a highlight), but there’s no sign of the overly bald tales of depression here, and the group almost sound more relaxed in their skin.

Still, there are a few moments of filler and just general oddness that can’t be gotten away from. While by no means being a poor song, ‘Idle Blood’ conjures up the exact style of recent, mellotron obsessed Opeth in a way that’s hard to shake off. It’s almost a carbon copy of an outake from their fellow Swedish group.

Taking each of the album’s song on its own merits shows that there’s no actual bad song on it, but the rich, textured vibe they apply across the board means the songs tend to bleed together, particularly towards the end of the album, until the impression of the tracks themselves are slightly nulified. It’s a minor complaint, but one that still stands. 

Overall though, both passing fans and rabid acolytes will be more than happy with this effort. It’s slightly quieter than previous releases, but awash with atmosphere and genuinely strong songwriting.

While it’s true that it might might lack the amount of utterly outstanding moments that has puncutated their previous works, it’s perhaps the most consitant record of their second era, and that’s not to be scoffed at. A more fitting soundtrack to tramping home through the wet and cold this winter you will be hard pressed to find. 

4 / 5 - Lorcan Archer ::: 22/11/09