Brave Murder Day
Recorded July 1996 in Dan Swano's Unisound/Gorysound Studio. Released August/November 1996 on Italian label Avantgarde Music.
Tracklist:1. Brave - 10:16
2. Murder - 4:54
3. Day - 4:28
4. Rainroom - 6:31
5. 12 - 8:18
6. Endtime - 6:45
Total runtime: 41:12
Lineup:Jonas Renkse - clean vocals, drums, lyrics
Anders Nystrom - guitars, bass
Fredrik Norrman - guitars
Mikael Akerfeldt (Opeth) - guest harsh vocals
Dan Swano - engineering/mixing
*This is the first time they featured a bird on the cover, a motif that would become their signature "mascot", you could say
*It is still one of the most unique albums in metal history. Both Jonas and Anders discuss how they were intentionally trying to bring in more non-metal influences into their sound, which was still less common at the time. Black metal crossed over with shoegaze and post-rock a lot starting in the 00s, but death metal and shoegaze have very rarely been merged together, yet Katatonia does it here. In particular they were listening to a lot of Slowdive (Jonas can even be seen wearing one of their shirts in the liner notes for the next album), and were incorporating other influences like Kent, Chris Isaac, and the Red House Painters.
*There's a more minimalistic philosophy in terms of instrumental parts compared to previous albums, less of a toss everything at the canvas and see what sticks approach and more focus on development of particular riffs and melodies, which is ironic given that Akerfeldt and Opeth were still in "kitchen sink mode" at the time. There's also a transition away from being as doomy, the songs are generally a bit more midtempo. Interestingly, for Katatonia having the most extreme metal influences on DoDS, and BMD starting to broaden their sound palette with more non-metal influences, BMW has more dissonant and angular melodies than DoDS does.
*This album continues to evoke Opeth a fair amount, particularly with some of the rapid shifts back and forth between heavy riffs with growls (even more obviously by having Akerfeldt himself) and quieter passages, substituting Opeth's acoustics for Anders' drenched clean tones
*"12" is a rerecording of "Black Erotica" from the W.A.R. compilation. Taking out the clean intro was a mistake in my opinion, but I do like the thicker sound of the rest of it better.
*When recording BMD they actually had very little new material prepared to record, so after setting up their gear, Dan went home, and the band went to work furiously writing away to have something to record the next day.
*Dan was so unimpressed with the ideas they worked with in the recording of the album that he didn't even bother mastering it. Normally I think Dan has pretty stellar taste, but I suppose he can't be right all the time.
*This was the first step in a long process of lowering their guitar tunings, here just to Eb standard. The guitar tones still sound fantastic to me, they used the iconic Boss HM-2 pedal that Entombed, Dismember and others had employed to create the signature Swedish buzzsaw guitar tone, though Katatonia's version was a bit more subtle. Anders is expanding his palette of tones here, with the opening screech of feedback on "Brave" and elsewhere, and employs some tapping later in the song (as a non-virtuoso example of how a technique can alter the feel of a song). This is more of a studio creation than directly Anders per se, but I love the stereo panning effect on the guitar lead in "Murder". He has some rather unique harmonies, especially on "12".
*The drumming is simplified here, and the drum tones haven't aged that well to me, they sound thin, clicky, and boxy. Jonas at the time was enamored with the drum sound Sunlight Studio had on some recordings with a digital kit, so he used Dan's equivalent set to those. "Day" sounds like either a drum machine or running that kit through some processing.
*I don't care as much for Nystrom's bass playing here as Guillaume's on the debut, it's lower in the mix, and not as adventurous
*Mikael really gives this album a boost, his harsh vocals just have so much more power and texture than Jonas' ever did
*"Day" I believe is Jonas first attempt at clean vocals. One of the prominent characteristics of shoegaze is that clean vocals are often a bit distant in the mix, obscured by effects and not always that intelligible, and this certainly rubs off here.
*Katatonia rarely utilizes samples, but "Endtime" has one from Stanley Kubrick's 1980
The Shining*"At Last" ends with a fadeout, the first one that they had done that I can recall. "Endtime" cuts out very suddenly at the end, a technique to introduce discomfort that they'll use to even greater effect later on.
*Going into this discography exploration I would in absolute terms have given BMD a significantly higher score than DoDS. The primary reason really is Akerfeldt's vocals, since he's arguably my favorite harsh vocalist. Sitting down with both of them again numerous times and thinking more deeply about it, it's far closer now. One thing that I never really thought about while listening over all these years, but now seems glaringly obvious, is how much I miss the keyboards from DoDS. They really added a lot, and as expansive as Anders' lines are on BMD, it's not the same effect as those crystalline synths on DoDS.
*The BMD tour was the first one to travel outside of Sweden, where they took In The Woods and Voice of Destruction with them. Jonas was a bit more comfortable with vocals at this point and wanted to perform them instead of drums. They brought in Kennet Englund to play drums, who had been a bandmate of Fredrik Norrman's in Uncanny. They also procured Mikael Oretoft from Eyekon to play bass live, and he would be part of the band for the next EP. The record label had not been released the album yet for the first half of the tour, so none of the fans knew the songs yet. Their tour bus did not have heat, and this eventually took a toll on Jonas' voice, making him too sick to even speak, necessitating Anders would have to perform vocals instead.
Sounds of Decay EP
Recorded February of 1997 in Sunlight Studio. Released December 1997 on Avantgarde Music.
Tracklist:1. Nowhere - 6:05
2. At Last - 6:13
3. Inside the Fall - 6:19
(4. Untrue - 2:31 - included on some reissues, and also on the B-side compilation album
Brave Yester Years from '04)
Lineup:Jonas Renkse - drums, lyrics
Anders Nystrom - guitars, bass, lyrics
Mikael Akerfeldt (Opeth) - guest harsh vocals
Tomas Skogsberg - engineering/mixing
*The cover is a still from the film
Begotten*It's also the last time they would use their original borderline illegible logo with the pentagram in it
*For the first time, they worked with Tom Skogsberg, one of the most legendary figures in metal, helming the iconic Sunlight Studio, where seminal albums were recorded from Dismember, Entombed, Grave, At The Gates, Amorphis, and hundreds of others. This also means that this album involves Jonas Renkse, Mikael Akerfeldt, Dan Swano, and Tomas Skogsberg working together, it's like the Avengers of Swedish metal. If I had a time machine, being in the same room with the four of them would definitely be on my list of places to be.
*This would be the final recording with a prominent harsh vocal style
*They partied excessively hard the night before the recording session for this EP, and as a result had to go back later and rerecord it once they heard how poorly it initially came out
*This EP starts to hint increasingly at the alternative rock influences that were seeping into their sound
*I'm not sure I've consciously thought about it this way until doing this runthrough, but Anders Nystrom is probably close to my favorite metal guitarist when it comes to cleanish tones. There are better riffers and soloists, but not many have his ear for interesting clean parts, arpeggios, and incorporation of effects pedals.
*They were very consciously inspired again by Paradise Lost's
Gothic on this album by the guitar melody stylings of Gregor Mackintosh
*The drum sound is noticeably improved here, much fuller than BMD
*They did one show with Akerfeldt fronting the band
Saw You Drown EP
Recorded July-August 1997. Released January 1998 on Avantgarde Music.
Tracklist:1. Saw You Drown - 5:01
2. Nerve - 4:30
3. Quiet World - 4:37
4. Scarlet Heavens - 10:24
Lineup:Jonas Renkse - vocals, drums, bass, songwriting, lyrics
Anders Nystrom - guitars, keyboards, bass, songwriting, lyrics
Fredrik Norrman - guitars
Mikael Oretoft - bass
Guillaume Le Huche - bass
Tomas Skogsberg - engineering/mixing
Fred Etsby (also the drummer of venerated bands Dismember and Carnage) - engineering
Dan Swano - production/engineering/mixing
*This one includes "Scarlet Heavens", which had already been on the split with Primordial, and three new songs that would portend the direction they would head on the next album.
*It's the first appearance of their classic logo that they would run with for for a number of albums
*"Nerve" is what I consider the start of a sound that they would settle into for awhile that for a long time was labeled "depressive rock". It has a bass-heavy power chord riff style mixed with leads that at times sounds like a far darker version of Weezer and other 90s alt rock bands.
*"Saw You Drown" took awhile to grow on me, but has become one of their more emotional resonant songs for me. Jonas' flawed but earnest delivery at this stage lends an authentic feel that is quite unique to this time period. They were huge fans of The Cure, especially the
Disintegration and
Pornography albums, and you can really hear the influence of Robert Smith's vocals on Jonas here.
"Quiet World" was one of my favorite Katatonia songs fairly early on. The main riff from it kind of sounds like a doom metal-filtered version of the "1979" Smashing Pumpkins riff with the open strings, wide voicings, and subtle string bends. The Mellotron and synths from Anders here would augur future developments in their sound.
*I must admit also that it took a number of years of being a fan of theirs before I realized that Jonas' last name is "Renkse" and not "Renske"
*
Overall favorite songs from this era - "Quiet World", "12", "Endtime", "Saw You Drown", "At Last"