Discouraged Ones
Recorded July-August 1997 at Sunlight Studio. Released April 1998 on Avantgarde Music.
Tracklist:1. I Break - 4:21
2. Stalemate - 4:19
3. Deadhouse - 4:35
4. Relention - 3:37
5. Cold Ways - 5:20
6. Gone - 2:47
7. Last Resort - 4:35
8. Nerve - 4:30
9. Saw You Drown - 5:02
10. Instrumental - 2:50
11. Distrust - 4:55
(12. Quiet World - 4.39)
Total Track Time - 46:51
Lineup:Jonas Renkse - lead vocals, drums, guitars, bass, songwriting, lyrics
Anders Nystrom - lead guitars, keyboards, bass, backing vocals, songwriting, lyrics
Fredrik Norrman - rhythm guitars
Micke Oretoft - bass
Mikael Akerfeldt (Opeth) - backing vocals, vocal production
Tomas Skogsberg - engineering/mixing
Fred Etsby - engineering
*This might be my favorite cover art of theirs. Is it a person? Is it a bird? Maybe both? An angel? It's just so visually stunning and mesmerizing, and I might like the darker, color palette-reversed version even better.
*Here's the photo I mentioned last week about Jonas wearing a Slowdive shirt, as they were a heavy influence on the band in this era. Also notice the hair styling, not so "metal" now.
*This signaled a major shift in Katatonia's sound, with Jonas now only singing clean vocals. They're really going for it with the first appearance of not just melodies, but vocal harmonies in some songs as well, mostly sung by Anders. Anders is actually doing the lead vocal in the chorus of "I Break", with Akerfeldt singing the harmony line. Overall, Jonas is still clearly inexperienced with clean vocals, and only hints at what is to come later. "Cold Ways" is probably the roughest vocal performance on the album.
*To further answer one of TAC's questions from last week, in the liner notes they did discuss the idea of hiring a harsh vocalist after BMD, since Akerfeldt was too committed to Opeth to join full-time, but were uncomfortable with the idea
*The interesting thing is that their overall style to me hasn't actually radically shifted all that much. Even some people who tend to overly focus on guitar riffs as what determine a style seem to consider this substantially different, which I don't really agree with. The general types of chords and melodies, repetitive riffing style, and rhythm section patterns are pretty similar. Lots of straight-ahead driving grooves with 8th notes on bass, cymbals and guitars, simple kick patterns on 1 and 3, and the shoegazey guitars. It's mainly the streamlining of the tracks (generally a few minutes shorter) and vocals that are really different. Maybe a bit less melody in the guitar parts and more power chords to make room for melodic vocals, but there are still a lot of melodic guitar bits. Also, no double bass drumming. Nevertheless, many of these songs, if you take the core of them, and swap Akerfeldt for Renkse, sound like they could be condensed BMD B-sides.
*This definitely has the most feel of The Cure gone heavy to me. Apparently in the studio Fred Etsby said they now sounded like The Cranberries.
*This was Jonas' last album on drums. I think I neglected to mention this last week, but Jonas had talked about around when BMD came out that he didn't really have the opportunity to practice, so his drumming had stagnated. It sounds to me like he eventually found some time to practice, or just spent more time in-studio working on and recording his parts, because they come across a bit less stiff to me, and there are some cooler fills in tracks like "I Break" and "Distrust" than on the earlier albums.
*They were starting to look for a full-time drummer at this point, putting up ads, and were intentionally looking to avoid double bass-heavy players. None they interviewed had the personality they were looking for though.
*This would be the only full-album new bassist Oretoft would play on. His parts are a bit more prominent in the mix than Anders' were on BMD, including a bass intro on "Relention", and occasional tasty fills here and there.
*There's another relatively rare sample in "Deadhouse", of a whale call
*The last guitar lick in "Relention" and possibly one other one that I can't seem to find now mark the emergence of a signature style of part that Anders would keep returning to on later albums
*Over time "Gone" has become one of my absolute favorite songs. That droning guitar line in the opening sounds like a heartbeat flatlining, the semi-clean guitar tone just has this decayed feel to it, and it's easily the most doomy track on the album. Jonas' vocals still have that amateur feel to them here as well, but for whatever reason they don't bug me like "Cold Ways" sometimes does, they're more endearing on this track and a few others like "Saw You Drown" or "Quiet World". Anders considers the latter song as belonging to this album even if it didn't come on the original album. It was recorded in the same sessions and came on the
Saw You Drown album teaser EP.
*"Last Resort" has a really nostalgic feel for me, with those really haunting melodic guitar lines and harmonies. It brings me back to when I felt like the only person on campus who knew about this hidden marvelous world of European metal, though I'm sure it objectively wasn't true and I was just meeting the wrong people, albeit was still incredibly niche.
*People always think of Opeth as the proggier band, but "Instrumental" feels like Akerfeldt must have adored this song, because he wrote a bunch of passages in 00s Opeth songs that have a similar vibe to this, with the arpeggiated/fingerpicked guitar lines, Mellotron keyboard parts, and melodic guitar soloing
*Further on "Instrumental", I always find it fascinating that even though I grew up listening to a ton of glam, power, prog, and neoclassical metal with shred guitar, and still appreciate that ferocity at times, I settled into liking these bands that have more attainable, non-virtuosic playing, Katatonia, Opeth, or even someone like In Flames being good examples. Nothing here that an advanced intermediate player couldn't handle, but it just works so well.
*"Distrust", and again, "Instrumental", are two of the better examples of how they're sounding more like a two-guitar band with the dueling solos, though I haven't yet found anything indicating whether Anders is playing both or if Frederik was playing more than just the credited "rhythm guitar"
*They didn't tour at all for this album. The reception was very mixed at the time. I suppose the album title was more apt than they realized. It began what became an era split in their fanbase. This was the period when it was becoming extremely common for formerly extreme metal bands to experiment with other styles (they specifically cite Paradise Lost and Tiamat, but of course there are countless others), but it seems like people weren't quite taking to them yet. They were supposed to perform a gig in Norway, and recruited Anders Nordin, the drummer from Opeth's first two albums, who rehearsed with them, but had to back out at the last minute and they didn't play the show.
*However, they did start receiving attention from larger labels, including Peaceville and Earache, who both expressed interest in signing them. As they were huge fans of numerous bands on Peaceville, they signed with them. I remember when I was getting into Katatonia I started hearing about "The Peaceville Three", who at the time I wanted to be Katatonia, Opeth, and Sentenced. Which retrospectively doesn't make sense since Sentenced was never on Peaceville Records. The actual Peaceville three of course were Paradise Lost, Anathema, and My Dying Bride, but I didn't get into any of them until later.
Favorite Songs - "Gone", "Quiet World", "Stalemate" (what a moody bridge that one has!), "Last Resort"
Topic: Katatonia Discography Discussion: Sky Void of Stars (2023) (Read 22629 times)