Album Review: Katatonia, Sky Void of Stars
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Katatonia‘s debut, Dance of December Souls, and as the Swedish melancholic masters shift from Peaceville Records — a home since 1999’s Tonight’s Decision, their fourth full-length — to Napalm Records, they offer a collection that emphasizes the journey their sound has undertaken across those three decades. Sky Void of Stars is their 12th album, and its 10-song/45-minute run follows 2020’s City Burials (review here) in its maturity of voice, its awareness of who and what Katatonia are as a band, and how after all this time, they’re going to keep both themselves and their audience engaged. Katatonia‘s music has never been party rock. Rooted in death-doom, guitarist Anders Nyström and vocalist Jonas Renkse — both founding members — have more than a few genuine slogs under their belt.
But as their contemporaries in bands like My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost have in recent years shifted back toward darker and heavier, more extreme and aggressive sounds, Katatonia remain more fiercely committed to melody, to creating an aural sphere that is as lush as it is grim, so that even a song like “Author,” with its harder twist in the chorus, or the album’s prog-metal six-minute finale “No Beacon to Illuminate Our Fall” — one of just two songs on the album with a title longer than a single word; the other is the political lyric “Colossal Shade” — can coexist fluidly with Katatonia‘s core tonality, vocal and production styles as a backdrop. From the dive-right-in intensity of opener “Austerity” to the push in the hook of “Birds” and the memorably wistful penultimate cut “Atrium,” which might be a defining moment for the album as a whole, Katatonia are themselves — Renkse and Nyström are joined in the band by bassist Niklas Sandin, guitarist Roger Öjersson and drummer Daniel Moilanen — even as they continue to evolve the scope of what that means.
To some extent, having such a well crafted sonic persona means that an established audience will both to a certain extent know what’s coming from a new release and have expectations in that regard. Maybe that’s unavoidable for an act like Katatonia, who are both long-tenured and have had a marked influence on death-doom, goth rock and depressive heavy music more generally along their way — they are a known quantity. Sky Void of Stars, when you zoom out on it, is not a radical change to the format of Katatonia. It’s easy to imagine some of these songs worked alongside the requisite older cuts into setlists for festivals and tours (the cycle has been underway since last Fall), while others are kind of left behind over time — if a later piece like “Sclera” is one of the latter, it would be a shame; its choral melody is quintessential Katatonia; you could use it as a primer to introduce people to the band — and some hit harder than others.
It’s a dynamic collection, professional in its level of production and sound, and part of the band’s core stylistically is a fluidity that comes not the least from Renkse‘s vocals, so yes, it flows from front to back with a kind of grace rare in or out of metal. They know what they’re doing even as they lean to one side or another between the more aggressive instrumental stretches — that opening shove into “Austerity” would be one, the culmination of “Author,” that chug in “Colossal Shade” peppered with other ambient layers as it is, and certainly they save the heaviest for last in “No Beacon to Illuminate Our Fall” guitar-wise — and the dancier pieces like “Opaline,” a brooding post-metal exploration in “Impermanence,” with SOEN‘s Joel Ekelöf on guest vocals and the more gently-delivered verse of “Sclera,” which tells a story lyrically that comes across as personal while somewhat opaque. They are, as noted in the first sentence above, masters.
At the same time, they bring as sure a hand to “No Beacon to Illuminate Our Fall,” which hits as hard in guitar as keyboard, has jazzier prog metal flourish and ends in a drift rather than a huge blowout. “Author” is death metal with clean singing over it. Even “Birds,” which is emotionally urgent in its beginning and answers that with a satisfying shove in its second half, finds Katatonia steady in their stance, feet on the ground structurally, while speaking to different sides of their approach. Perhaps it’s just that after three decades, that root definition of who Katatonia are as a band and what they can do while still sounding like themselves has become so encompassing that “Impermanence,” “Sclera,” “Atrium” and “No Beacon to Illuminate Our Fall” can coexist smoothly after songs like “Opaline” and “Drab Moon” have already marked out so much ground being covered.
Lyrics are another tie bringing the songs together. There are a few specific references; the year 1988 is namedropped in “Austerity,” and Renkse mentions being 46 in “Opaline,” while the bridge of “Atrium” takes place in the Marriott presumably at 7th and 46th in Manhattan — the rest of that song would seem to be in a divorce lawyer’s office — but these are part of skillful, thoughtful storytelling that’s enhanced by the emotive presence and delivery of the vocals, and true to form in meeting listener expectations there as well.
Maybe the ultimate story of Sky Void of Stars — the title-line delivered in “Author” — is one of Katatonia playing to their strengths. Outside perhaps the finisher, the album doesn’t feel like it’s actively pushing back on the band’s identity or trying to take what’s so immediately recognizable about their work (at least to the converted) and throwing it out the window of that Marriott suite. But in the case of Katatonia, this particular band, the idea of “playing to strengths” covers a significant range; there are many strengths toward which to play. Sky Void of Stars will keep them on the road — the 12th chapter in an ongoing narrative of their evolution — will please their listener base while giving reason to proselytize, and has enough details in its sound and overarching breadth to dive into for the band and audience alike over a longer term than week-of-release or current-tour-cycle. You wouldn’t necessarily call it groundbreaking, but it does carve its own space in their discography, serving as a reminder of how much Katatonia have accomplished as they push ever and reliably forward.
Another fine album based on my first few listens. Perhaps not as immediately hooky as some of City Burials? Looking forward to seeing them in a couple of weeks in London with Solstafir.