Not sure if anyone has seen this...stumbled upon it recently. Pretty interesting stuff, Jonas and Anders talk about the change in style between BMD and DO, influences, etc.
Terrorizer favorites and sole exponents of Heavy melancholy Katatonia have always stood apart from the rest of the Swedish scene. But with their third album `Discouraged Ones´, theyve severed all remaining connections to the outside world. Nick Terry talked to Anders Nyström and Jonas Renkse about Katatonia´s unique art of disenchantment.
When we last featured Katatonia in these pages, sixteen issues ago in #35, it was (rightly) remarked that this Swedish band have never really fitted in. Not now, not back then, on the eve of their second album and cult classic `Brave Murder Day´, not from word go. Its not as if Katatonia have so much broken the rules, as simply quietly chosen to ignore them, silently absconding off down their own chosen path. For a guitar band that hails from Stockholm, this is a pretty unique state of affairs.
Dont misunderstand us: its not that Katatonia havent taken influences from other bands, its just that theyre not always the bands youd expect. Nor have they cut themselves off completely from polite society: Michael from Opeth sang on both `Brave Murder Day´ and last years `sounds of decay´ MCD, while Katatonia guitarist Anders Nyström will be working with Dan Swanö on the second Diabolical Masquerade album in due course. Its just that, well, Katatonia stand alone.
"Ive been thinking about that lately a lot, actually," says Anders, sometime owner of the underground moniker Blackheim. "I dont think I can mention one band that sounds exactly like us. We have always been used to being related to Paradise Lost, for instance. Which, of course, was our main influence when we started out the band in `91, so were not going to try to escape under a chair, and try pretending its not like that."
Indeed, it would be hard for Katatonia to do so. When last year, we went to interview Paradise Lost around the `One Second´ album, we thought itd be amusing to take along a copy of `Brave Murder Day´ and see what Gregor Mackintosh and Nick Holmes made of their onetime pupils. We have a sneaking suspicion that Gregor was still trying to pick his jaw off the floor days later.
"We saw that!" Anders chirrups excitedly. "That was good! It was great, because weve always wanted to know their opinion about us. Back in `94, we thought we were carrying on what they should have carried on what they did with `Gothic´. We really wanted Gregor Mackintosh to hear our stuff and go, `Oh shit, we should have gone in that direction with Paradise Lost! `. Something like that. It was cool, you know. So we succeeded in that, at least.
"Basically," he continues, "people can still say its Paradise Lost feeling, but it depends on how related they are to the other Katatonia releases. I think from some point, we found our own identity."
Third album in, Katatonia have more than found their own identity: theyve reinvented themselves. If `Brave Murder Day´ had us wowed and enthralled back in `96, then you just would not believe the reaction to `Discouraged Ones´ around these parts. Metaltrooper Whalen has already opined that "everybody should hear it", while yours truly has spent literally the last forty-eight hours wrestling with this article, trying to work out the shortest, most direct expressway to your skulls and the best, most snappy descriptions of the wonders contained therein. It has been, needless to say, a near-impossible task: theres something just too subtle about the way in which `Discouraged Ones´ sneaks up on you and ensnares you in its melancholic vise. So, apologies
Those of you who checked out `Brave Murder Day´ will know what you might have expected: eight-minute-long-songs, harsh vocals and a slow-motion avalanche of guitars that, no matter how the tune meanders, always seems to zero in on a dead-centre drone of a riff. Neither truly Gothic Metal and certainly not Black Metal, Katatonia circa `96 were decidedly on the threshold of something other. That something has turned out to be: four-minute-song songs, clean plaintive, harmonized vocals, and a languid, torpid guitar sound thats best described as a radiant surge, Surprised? You will be. Thrilled, too.
"Actually," Anders explains, "back when we did the `Brave Murder Day´ album, we realized that Jonas had lost the ability to do the `Dance Of The December Souls´ [Katatonia´s first album- NT] vocals, those harsh kind of Death Metal growls. We tried a lot of times for him to do them, but it just didn't work, so we got another guy to do the harsh vocals. We basically realized that Jonas was better on the clean vocals. We hadnt been experimenting much with clean vocals before, only on our track from 1994 called `Scarlet Heavens´. So it was like the music progressed, but the vocals just stood still from 1993-1994. This was a very good moment for us to expand on them.
"Thats the absolutely major difference," Anders continues. "Because Musically, you know, the tunes, they are basically the same. The arrangement of the song on `Discouraged Ones´ is actually a little more basic; we dont have those lengthy songs anymore, theyre all a little bit more adjusted into this verse/chorus style. Maybe another difference thats not that important is we used Sunlight Studio for this album. Everything previous had been recorded at Unisound with Dan Swanö, but Unisound was shut down, so we asked Tomas Skogsberg to book studio time for us. Everything worked out really good. Tomas told us how everything worked, and we worked there alone at night."
Jonas picks up the thread.
"Its pretty funny, because when we were about to record the album, I had no lyrics written, and I felt like I didnt want to throw the chance away to write good lyrics. I felt like I had pressure on me to do something special this time, mostly because of the vocals. Its more easy for people to hear what youre singing when youre using normal vocals. Also, I really wanted it to be pretty simple, not hiding in hard words or difficult terms like most of the bands do today. I wanted them to be pretty much simple, and also to feel discouraged, because that was how I felt at the time, and thats why the album title is what it is."
You were discouraged with the band?
"No, not that," Jonas replies. "We had a very good time during the recording; the band feeling was really okay, Me and Anders, were not like committing suicide, but we feel pretty discouraged about almost everything. Its almost schizophrenic. Things connected with music makes us happy; of course were feeling very happy that the albums out, and when we get a good review. If we didnt have the music, I wouldnt like to think how we would feel." With `Discouraged Ones´, Katatonia are once again living up to their band-name in the moods they impart to the listener. Few records that will be released this year are going to sound this withdrawn, this disconnected. Just as Jonas said earlier, only a select few simple words fill out the lyrics to the ten songs on here (an instrumental rounds things out), and needless to say, theyre about the most melancholic and bleak words he could have chosen. Kicking off with the haunting `I Break´, the albums first lines are: sounds of imbalance/ sleeps through the never/ the artificial lightsource/ is creeping with flies". The sense of claustrophobia and weariness is maintained throughout. Yet, coupled with the hypnotic songwriting and emotive vocal harmonies, you end up gently oscillating between a comfortable numbness and a disheartened sensation of defeat. Stark but affecting, no one else in Metal has probably ever written a set of songs like these.
Then again, it might be better to label Katatonia Heavy Melancholy rather than Heavy Metal. If I had to nominate outside reference points, it´d be the early cure circa their pre-Prozac classic `Pornography´, or the drawn-out torpor of the onetime 4AD act, the Californian band Red House Painters. (Incidentally, RHP once covered Kiss `Shock Me´. Hehehe.) The Comparisons go a little deeper than just the prevailing mood, too. Like the deceptively simple music of Red House Painters, Katatonia have long believed that less is more, and its this naked simplicity that marks out `Discouraged Ones´ as the classic that it is.
"We try to keep it very simple," Jonas agrees, because I think its easier to reflect our emotions in the stuff that way. If we come up with a good riff, its half of the song. The lyrics are pretty much the same. When we started out, they were more influenced of course by Paradise Lost, but also by the late Bathory way, pretending to be in the middle ages a bit. Its hard for me to write that style at the moment. Now Im maybe more influenced by things like Red House Painters; theyre absolutely my favorite band at the moment, and a big inspiration."
But simplicity is hard, isnt it? You can end up writing a song, and if just one note were different, the whole tune would collapse and become boring. Its like walking a tightrope.
"Yeah. its important to hit that one note, and to feel that the song is not boring. Red House Painters do it really well, and I really like that idea. Its get the feeling out, of feeling a bit tired, pretty much depressed, and discouraged. The bands today, they try to express depression with a bit too much enthusiasm."
Im sorry?
"Well, what I mean is, theres a bit too much of the orchestral stuff. We try to keep it pretty low, with the guitars as the main instrument, no violins, no female vocals; the keyboards are not playing the leads, but just in the background, to give some space."
Thinking about it, you really are the polar opposite of the typical Swedish Underground band, arent you? I mean, you dont widdle.
"I think when we started out," Jonas replies, "there were not too many bands from Sweden that played heavy all the way. We were influenced by Paradise Lost, yes, and I think its always been more of a British thing with this Doom stuff, so then we started, we were one of the first bands to use slow rhythms with harsh vocals here. There was Candlemass, of course, but they were in the Death Metal scene. I cant come up with any other band that did it back in ´91- ´92. We were on our own.
"Its like, pretty funny," the singer continues, "because when we released our demo-tape in 1992, many people from other bands started doing Katatonia stuff, pretty much. But I think with `Brave Murder Day´, we had a break with the band, and it looked like these people were going more for the trend. They more or less didnt care that wed released a new album. Now, of course, theyre more into the Heavy Metal revival."
To be honest, Jonas has just touched on the main problem I had in writing this article. About all I will say is that its very Heavy Metal to be depressed, but that Metal isnt the only music that captures the feelings involved. Katatonia combine the best of both worlds: those "lonely" leads which Mr. Whalen talked about last time round are still omnipresent on `Discouraged Ones´ and theyre still as inimitably influenced by PL and other Metal Masters as ever. Meanwhile, Jonas´ contribution has allowed the band to tap into reservoirs of expressive power which are simply not there in much of the Metal that essays a melancholic feel. To put it another way, Id challenge the slowest, most mournful Doom act (say, Stormcrowfleet, or even Katatonia´s label mates Unholy) to write a song as blood-drainingly scary and affect-laden as Red House Painters´Evil´. Or as slow.
There remains the question of where this all comes from - inside, that is. As might be expected, and understandably, Jonas is vague on the precise details of his inner life, but a few, quiet revealing gems crop up in the interrogation. `Discouraged Ones´ is littered with lines like "I will find a way/ to sever myself/ exit all today" or "somehow I never leave/ this deadhouse/ somehow I dont mind being gone". However they look on paper, believe you me, when you hear them on record, you do start to get worried for the poor mans state of mind, and wonder if hed not sooner vanish off somewhere, deserting everyday life in favor of something else.
"Im not really sure where it comes from," comes the initial unsurprising answer. "When me and Anders started out to do music on our own, we wanted to make it dark and depressive. I guess were not the happiest people around. weve developed it through the years. Im really not sure where it comes from, "he repeats, "its just there."
You mentioned earlier "its not like were committing suicide, but there are quiet a few references to suicide on this album, arent there?
"Yeah, there really are, but its not really the main thing. I used to think in terms of `being gone´. Its not always related to suicide, but there are moments when I feel I just want to be - gone. But Im not sure if I want to be dead..."
To disappear, then?
"Sort of. There are pretty many ways to be gone. Its the same subject as suicide, the same feeling, but I wouldnt say its that drastic. I just dont want to write like, `This is a suicide song´. If someone writes a suicide song, you get the feeling that this guy wrote the song, then he committed suicide. I really dont want to, you know, push it too far."
Good.
And there you have it. Katatonia have pushed the boat out with this album, but it ought to be plain sailing from here on out. Meanwhile, the band members´ respective side projects continue, Jonas with October Tide (We realized the new Katatonia album is pretty far from what we were doing in the past, so me and Fredrik, the guitarist, were talking about doing another album in September") and Anders in Diabolical Masquerade ("Diabolical Masquerade is very, very far from Katatonia at this point, so its good to go into the studio and experiment with Metal"). Having left Bewitched last year (Im getting a bit tired of this, like, everything should be strictly Metal to the bone. Its not like that."), perhaps a mere two projects are enough for him now. Meanwhile, there are the initial reactions to `Discouraged Ones´ to consider. "The people Ive been playing this album to so far ," Anders says towards the end of our conversation together, "theyve said it was like, `What´. It was what they expected, but they didnt expect this at the same time. Something like that. We havent repeated ourselves; weve really done something different this time. People should be ready for that; its the right time for this album, I think."
Terrorizer favorites and sole exponents of Heavy melancholy Katatonia have always stood apart from the rest of the Swedish scene. But with their third album `Discouraged Ones´, theyve severed all remaining connections to the outside world. Nick Terry talked to Anders Nyström and Jonas Renkse about Katatonia´s unique art of disenchantment.
When we last featured Katatonia in these pages, sixteen issues ago in #35, it was (rightly) remarked that this Swedish band have never really fitted in. Not now, not back then, on the eve of their second album and cult classic `Brave Murder Day´, not from word go. Its not as if Katatonia have so much broken the rules, as simply quietly chosen to ignore them, silently absconding off down their own chosen path. For a guitar band that hails from Stockholm, this is a pretty unique state of affairs.
Dont misunderstand us: its not that Katatonia havent taken influences from other bands, its just that theyre not always the bands youd expect. Nor have they cut themselves off completely from polite society: Michael from Opeth sang on both `Brave Murder Day´ and last years `sounds of decay´ MCD, while Katatonia guitarist Anders Nyström will be working with Dan Swanö on the second Diabolical Masquerade album in due course. Its just that, well, Katatonia stand alone.
"Ive been thinking about that lately a lot, actually," says Anders, sometime owner of the underground moniker Blackheim. "I dont think I can mention one band that sounds exactly like us. We have always been used to being related to Paradise Lost, for instance. Which, of course, was our main influence when we started out the band in `91, so were not going to try to escape under a chair, and try pretending its not like that."
Indeed, it would be hard for Katatonia to do so. When last year, we went to interview Paradise Lost around the `One Second´ album, we thought itd be amusing to take along a copy of `Brave Murder Day´ and see what Gregor Mackintosh and Nick Holmes made of their onetime pupils. We have a sneaking suspicion that Gregor was still trying to pick his jaw off the floor days later.
"We saw that!" Anders chirrups excitedly. "That was good! It was great, because weve always wanted to know their opinion about us. Back in `94, we thought we were carrying on what they should have carried on what they did with `Gothic´. We really wanted Gregor Mackintosh to hear our stuff and go, `Oh shit, we should have gone in that direction with Paradise Lost! `. Something like that. It was cool, you know. So we succeeded in that, at least.
"Basically," he continues, "people can still say its Paradise Lost feeling, but it depends on how related they are to the other Katatonia releases. I think from some point, we found our own identity."
Third album in, Katatonia have more than found their own identity: theyve reinvented themselves. If `Brave Murder Day´ had us wowed and enthralled back in `96, then you just would not believe the reaction to `Discouraged Ones´ around these parts. Metaltrooper Whalen has already opined that "everybody should hear it", while yours truly has spent literally the last forty-eight hours wrestling with this article, trying to work out the shortest, most direct expressway to your skulls and the best, most snappy descriptions of the wonders contained therein. It has been, needless to say, a near-impossible task: theres something just too subtle about the way in which `Discouraged Ones´ sneaks up on you and ensnares you in its melancholic vise. So, apologies
Those of you who checked out `Brave Murder Day´ will know what you might have expected: eight-minute-long-songs, harsh vocals and a slow-motion avalanche of guitars that, no matter how the tune meanders, always seems to zero in on a dead-centre drone of a riff. Neither truly Gothic Metal and certainly not Black Metal, Katatonia circa `96 were decidedly on the threshold of something other. That something has turned out to be: four-minute-song songs, clean plaintive, harmonized vocals, and a languid, torpid guitar sound thats best described as a radiant surge, Surprised? You will be. Thrilled, too.
"Actually," Anders explains, "back when we did the `Brave Murder Day´ album, we realized that Jonas had lost the ability to do the `Dance Of The December Souls´ [Katatonia´s first album- NT] vocals, those harsh kind of Death Metal growls. We tried a lot of times for him to do them, but it just didn't work, so we got another guy to do the harsh vocals. We basically realized that Jonas was better on the clean vocals. We hadnt been experimenting much with clean vocals before, only on our track from 1994 called `Scarlet Heavens´. So it was like the music progressed, but the vocals just stood still from 1993-1994. This was a very good moment for us to expand on them.
"Thats the absolutely major difference," Anders continues. "Because Musically, you know, the tunes, they are basically the same. The arrangement of the song on `Discouraged Ones´ is actually a little more basic; we dont have those lengthy songs anymore, theyre all a little bit more adjusted into this verse/chorus style. Maybe another difference thats not that important is we used Sunlight Studio for this album. Everything previous had been recorded at Unisound with Dan Swanö, but Unisound was shut down, so we asked Tomas Skogsberg to book studio time for us. Everything worked out really good. Tomas told us how everything worked, and we worked there alone at night."
Jonas picks up the thread.
"Its pretty funny, because when we were about to record the album, I had no lyrics written, and I felt like I didnt want to throw the chance away to write good lyrics. I felt like I had pressure on me to do something special this time, mostly because of the vocals. Its more easy for people to hear what youre singing when youre using normal vocals. Also, I really wanted it to be pretty simple, not hiding in hard words or difficult terms like most of the bands do today. I wanted them to be pretty much simple, and also to feel discouraged, because that was how I felt at the time, and thats why the album title is what it is."
You were discouraged with the band?
"No, not that," Jonas replies. "We had a very good time during the recording; the band feeling was really okay, Me and Anders, were not like committing suicide, but we feel pretty discouraged about almost everything. Its almost schizophrenic. Things connected with music makes us happy; of course were feeling very happy that the albums out, and when we get a good review. If we didnt have the music, I wouldnt like to think how we would feel." With `Discouraged Ones´, Katatonia are once again living up to their band-name in the moods they impart to the listener. Few records that will be released this year are going to sound this withdrawn, this disconnected. Just as Jonas said earlier, only a select few simple words fill out the lyrics to the ten songs on here (an instrumental rounds things out), and needless to say, theyre about the most melancholic and bleak words he could have chosen. Kicking off with the haunting `I Break´, the albums first lines are: sounds of imbalance/ sleeps through the never/ the artificial lightsource/ is creeping with flies". The sense of claustrophobia and weariness is maintained throughout. Yet, coupled with the hypnotic songwriting and emotive vocal harmonies, you end up gently oscillating between a comfortable numbness and a disheartened sensation of defeat. Stark but affecting, no one else in Metal has probably ever written a set of songs like these.
Then again, it might be better to label Katatonia Heavy Melancholy rather than Heavy Metal. If I had to nominate outside reference points, it´d be the early cure circa their pre-Prozac classic `Pornography´, or the drawn-out torpor of the onetime 4AD act, the Californian band Red House Painters. (Incidentally, RHP once covered Kiss `Shock Me´. Hehehe.) The Comparisons go a little deeper than just the prevailing mood, too. Like the deceptively simple music of Red House Painters, Katatonia have long believed that less is more, and its this naked simplicity that marks out `Discouraged Ones´ as the classic that it is.
"We try to keep it very simple," Jonas agrees, because I think its easier to reflect our emotions in the stuff that way. If we come up with a good riff, its half of the song. The lyrics are pretty much the same. When we started out, they were more influenced of course by Paradise Lost, but also by the late Bathory way, pretending to be in the middle ages a bit. Its hard for me to write that style at the moment. Now Im maybe more influenced by things like Red House Painters; theyre absolutely my favorite band at the moment, and a big inspiration."
But simplicity is hard, isnt it? You can end up writing a song, and if just one note were different, the whole tune would collapse and become boring. Its like walking a tightrope.
"Yeah. its important to hit that one note, and to feel that the song is not boring. Red House Painters do it really well, and I really like that idea. Its get the feeling out, of feeling a bit tired, pretty much depressed, and discouraged. The bands today, they try to express depression with a bit too much enthusiasm."
Im sorry?
"Well, what I mean is, theres a bit too much of the orchestral stuff. We try to keep it pretty low, with the guitars as the main instrument, no violins, no female vocals; the keyboards are not playing the leads, but just in the background, to give some space."
Thinking about it, you really are the polar opposite of the typical Swedish Underground band, arent you? I mean, you dont widdle.
"I think when we started out," Jonas replies, "there were not too many bands from Sweden that played heavy all the way. We were influenced by Paradise Lost, yes, and I think its always been more of a British thing with this Doom stuff, so then we started, we were one of the first bands to use slow rhythms with harsh vocals here. There was Candlemass, of course, but they were in the Death Metal scene. I cant come up with any other band that did it back in ´91- ´92. We were on our own.
"Its like, pretty funny," the singer continues, "because when we released our demo-tape in 1992, many people from other bands started doing Katatonia stuff, pretty much. But I think with `Brave Murder Day´, we had a break with the band, and it looked like these people were going more for the trend. They more or less didnt care that wed released a new album. Now, of course, theyre more into the Heavy Metal revival."
To be honest, Jonas has just touched on the main problem I had in writing this article. About all I will say is that its very Heavy Metal to be depressed, but that Metal isnt the only music that captures the feelings involved. Katatonia combine the best of both worlds: those "lonely" leads which Mr. Whalen talked about last time round are still omnipresent on `Discouraged Ones´ and theyre still as inimitably influenced by PL and other Metal Masters as ever. Meanwhile, Jonas´ contribution has allowed the band to tap into reservoirs of expressive power which are simply not there in much of the Metal that essays a melancholic feel. To put it another way, Id challenge the slowest, most mournful Doom act (say, Stormcrowfleet, or even Katatonia´s label mates Unholy) to write a song as blood-drainingly scary and affect-laden as Red House Painters´Evil´. Or as slow.
There remains the question of where this all comes from - inside, that is. As might be expected, and understandably, Jonas is vague on the precise details of his inner life, but a few, quiet revealing gems crop up in the interrogation. `Discouraged Ones´ is littered with lines like "I will find a way/ to sever myself/ exit all today" or "somehow I never leave/ this deadhouse/ somehow I dont mind being gone". However they look on paper, believe you me, when you hear them on record, you do start to get worried for the poor mans state of mind, and wonder if hed not sooner vanish off somewhere, deserting everyday life in favor of something else.
"Im not really sure where it comes from," comes the initial unsurprising answer. "When me and Anders started out to do music on our own, we wanted to make it dark and depressive. I guess were not the happiest people around. weve developed it through the years. Im really not sure where it comes from, "he repeats, "its just there."
You mentioned earlier "its not like were committing suicide, but there are quiet a few references to suicide on this album, arent there?
"Yeah, there really are, but its not really the main thing. I used to think in terms of `being gone´. Its not always related to suicide, but there are moments when I feel I just want to be - gone. But Im not sure if I want to be dead..."
To disappear, then?
"Sort of. There are pretty many ways to be gone. Its the same subject as suicide, the same feeling, but I wouldnt say its that drastic. I just dont want to write like, `This is a suicide song´. If someone writes a suicide song, you get the feeling that this guy wrote the song, then he committed suicide. I really dont want to, you know, push it too far."
Good.
And there you have it. Katatonia have pushed the boat out with this album, but it ought to be plain sailing from here on out. Meanwhile, the band members´ respective side projects continue, Jonas with October Tide (We realized the new Katatonia album is pretty far from what we were doing in the past, so me and Fredrik, the guitarist, were talking about doing another album in September") and Anders in Diabolical Masquerade ("Diabolical Masquerade is very, very far from Katatonia at this point, so its good to go into the studio and experiment with Metal"). Having left Bewitched last year (Im getting a bit tired of this, like, everything should be strictly Metal to the bone. Its not like that."), perhaps a mere two projects are enough for him now. Meanwhile, there are the initial reactions to `Discouraged Ones´ to consider. "The people Ive been playing this album to so far ," Anders says towards the end of our conversation together, "theyve said it was like, `What´. It was what they expected, but they didnt expect this at the same time. Something like that. We havent repeated ourselves; weve really done something different this time. People should be ready for that; its the right time for this album, I think."
