Maximum Metal Rating Legend

Katatonia Night Is The New Day Company: Peaceville Records Release: 2009 Genre: Doom Reviewer: Chaoslord

Hands down their best work to date

Ahhh....Katatonia, how you make me wish that life wasn't so despair filled and mundane. Since the band changed their sound to more clean vocals circa 1998, this band has been churning out good quality doom albums. This album is nothing short of amazing.

The clean vocals that lead singer Jonas Renske delivers pulls you in and makes you feel his pain and emotion with each word that is uttered. The guitars are a great marriage of melancholic and heavy as necessary. This band has continued to evolve and aim for new heights with each successive album. Fans of My Dying Bride and Opeth's Damnation will fall in love with this album.

Now, I know it seems like some of the descriptions I'm using might not seem very metal, but this is not your typical metal album we're dealing with here. No screaming/growling/shrieking etc. or face melting guitar riffs and brain beating blast beats will be found on this record. This record is thought provoking and addictive at times. I will find myself listening to this late at night when I am sitting alone with my thoughts.

I don't typically go for the mellower side of metal but with an album like this, it's hard not to like. If you haven't heard any Katatonia before, want a good quality release or just want some mood music, this is the album for you. What my one problem with the album is lies in the fact that it sounds somewhat pop oriented. That isn't necessarily a bad thing mind you, just not what you would expect from a band that once had death metal vocals featured on their albums.

I love this album and think it is hands down their best work to date. Don't take my word for it, check it out yourself and see if you don't just stop and listen to the album and lose yourself in your thoughts.

Katatonia Night Is The New Day Company: Peaceville Release: 2009 Genre: Gothic death/doom Reviewer: Raising Iron

The perfect balance of beauty and misery

I've been wondering if anything was yet to be released in 2009 to rival the majesty and grace of Amorphis' Skyforger, and Katatonia have answered the question with an emphatic--YES! With Night Is the New Day, our fellow Swedes have entered a new phase of their career, creating a richly dark tapestry, weaving across dim skies with jaded indifference as to where the wind takes them.

Katatonia have been creating their shoegazing brand of despondent rock/metal for years now to great success: Viva Emptiness, Tonight's Decision, et al; the list goes on, not to mention their curious beginnings rooted in a gothic death/doom hybrid of sorts, but with their latest release, the band have struck the perfect balance of beauty and misery, a dichotomous proposition to be sure, and one that only a very few can truly construct with any measure of actualization. The band and its songs truly revolve around the enigmatic singer, for as always Jonas Renkse's haunting delivery never fails to captivate or enthrall.

On past releases, their songs have always contained a tinge of underlying hatred and anger toward the cruel lot life often deals; that angst simmering just beneath the surface, not flamboyant but quite perceptible; futilely struggling against the current of the world's travails. But on this release, it seems as if the band have given up fighting the depressive gloom that pervades every corner of their chosen milieu, instead, accepting the grim sorrow that fate as so harshly dealt, content to embrace the brooding shade that surrounds their every step, hence the more than appropriate album title. Things are written with a slightly more progressive feel than in the past, the melodies wandering, seemingly aimless, through loosely constructed corridors of doom, bumping the walls at every turn, yet arriving at their desired destination; the opulent production availing the listener of every creak and groan throughout the band's bleak dwelling.

What more can be said? With Night Is the New Day, Katatonia have unleashed an insidiously black ink into the soul of the world, forever staining it with unrelenting apathy, and leaving its indelible mark upon its cask.