1) tonight’s decision
2) last fair deal gone down
3) brave murder day
4) discouraged ones
5) viva emptiness
6) the fall of hearts
7) dance of december souls
8) night is the new day
9) the great cold distance
10) dead end kings
11) city burials
debut is perfectly respectable goth-tinged doom/death with a tone of mournful grandeur, but like a lot of peaceville stuff it’s just kind of drab and lethargic, not to mention painfully overlong and with melodies straying too far into the maudlin at times. the only reason BMD gets grouped with the debut is the growls, but it’s actually much closer to the sound of the third album than the first, much less metal and more shoegaze/goth rock/opeth/etc influences. it’s also a lot more varied and dynamic with a stronger identity though. discouraged ones is kat’s try at cure worship, easily their most nakedly emotional work and i used to love it for that, but these days it’s a bit wimpy and self-pitying for my tastes.
tonight’s decision was a departure into something more original and should've been praised as such, but it seems to be the black sheep of their discog. it’s chilly and austere by early katatonia standards, bleak without the accompanying mawkishness, a textbook example of how withholding and restraint can create a more intense mood than direct emotional manipulation. love this album, ‘black session’ is a top 3 kat tune IMO.
can’t say i’m a fan of the shiny shimmery sound they struck upon with last fair deal, which is a little light on atmosphere, but even so it's probably their finest collection of songs. not that i agree with katatonia’s fanbase on the highlights: ‘i transpire’ and ‘sweet nurse’ have both spent time as my favourite katatonia song – the latter was my most listened to song on lastfm at one time lol, ‘til it got overthrown by like ‘the break of autumn’ or ‘starless’ or ‘idioteque’ or ‘a strange day’ or something. ‘the future of speech’ has an all-timer chorus as well. none of these are among the most hyped songs on this album, but that’s ‘cause katatonia’s fanbase is made up faglords, no offence.
viva emptiness marks the transition into the nu-katatonia sound, which is obviously their heaviest era but i don’t much care for it. VE in particular is kind of like linkin park for prog dads who need something faux-edgy to accompany their mid-life crisis; over time they dropped a lot of the edginess but not, alas, the bland, slick radio-ready maturity, nor the deliverance chuggin' and damnation proggin'. the urban angst and forced discordance is pretty embarrassing here but this album does at least have a ton of personality, whereas some of the later albums can feel like they’re made by a katatonia algorithm at times. the opening song kind of sums it up, a great verse surrounded by lame posturing.
out of the ones which follow i’m quite drawn to the fall of hearts, probably the most ambitious and progressive of their later work, with some surprising rhythmic and melodic complexity and a good grasp of how to build and release tension. ‘night is the new day’ seems like the apex of the later kat sound for good or ill. the only ones i find a real slog are bell end kings and shitty burials.
