Night is the New Day (2009)
1. Forsaker 4:05
2. The Longest Year 4:39
3. Idle Blood 4:23
4. Onward into Battle 3:51
5. Liberation 4:18
6. The Promise of Deceit 4:17
7. Nephilim 4:27
8. New Night 4:27
9. Inheritance 4:30
10. Day and Then the Shade 4:27
11. Departer 5:28
2011 Tour Edition Bonus tracks (some of which were also found on singles/EPs):
12. Ashen 4:09
13. Sold Heart 4:36
14. Day and Then the Shade (Frank Default mix) 5:39
15. Idle Blood (Linje 14) 3:23
Note: There is also a 2019 10th anniversary edition which has all of the above bonus tracks plus 7 live tracks - 5 that are also on other live albums but 2 that are unique to the anniversary edition.
Lineup:Jonas Renkse - vocals
Anders Nyström - guitars
Fredrik Norrman - guitars
Mattias Norrman - bass
Daniel Liljekvist - drums
Additional:Frank Default - synthesizers, programming, piano, additional percussion; he'd added some keyboards to The Great Cold Distance bonus tracks and Jonas worked with him to add keyboards and programing to the songs for Night is the New Day
Krister Linder - guest vocals and lyrics on Departer
This is the first Katatonia album written primarily by Jonas. After the tour cycle for The Great Cold Distance ended, they were going to write new music but things kind of slowed down with several of the band members having kids during this time. Jonas had written some music in 2008 but didn’t really do anything with it or turn it into songs, and then his son was born at the end of the year. A few months later he finally spoke with Anders about the next album, but Anders didn’t have anything - he had been dealing with the business side of things for a long time at that point, and that contributed to writer’s block.
Jonas then started writing as much as possible to see where things would go. He’d written a lot for The Great Cold Distance, but he and Anders had worked together back then. This time it was just him. After writing music 24-7 for a while, he sent some ideas to the rest of the band who liked it and encouraged him to continue. Then he started to work with Frank Default to add some keyboards and programming to the songs.
They booked studio time for July of 2009. In the spring, Jonas and Anders went to Jonas' parents house for a week, like they had done as kids, to work on the music and the pre-production of the album. During this time without any distractions, they wrote the music for Forsaker and Onward into Battle together, and Anders wrote the music and lyrics to Idle Blood. (All other songs were written by Jonas). Frank Default joined them to finish adding keyboards and Daniel came to work on drums, and they had the album almost finished after that time and were ready for the studio.
Jonas was there for the whole recording process - for the recording of the drums in a separate studio (Studio Mega), and then recording the guitars at Ghost Ward (David Castillo’s studio) in Stockholm. Although he is not credited for it, Jonas played guitars on the album - he’d written most of the songs and it was faster to play some himself than to teach the others everything. (I’m not sure why he is credited on some albums and not others - in an interview around The Fall of Hearts time, he said he’s played guitar on a lot of their albums but didn’t really need credit).
They did some festivals and support tours (opening for Porcupine Tree and Paradise Lost) while waiting for the album to be released.
They also finally got a management company (Northern Management, who also managed Opeth and Paradise Lost), which was a great relief for Anders who could finally step back from the management duties.
Lineup ChangesThis marked the end of Katatonia’s longest period with the same lineup, as the Norrman brothers left the band at the end of the year. Katatonia had plans to increase their live touring, and both brothers had families and didn’t want to/weren’t able to commit to touring that much.
Replacing them were:
Per Eriksson - guitarist in Bloodbath and also a long-term guitar tech for Katatonia
Niklas Sandin - bass, who had previously played in a band, Amaran, with one of Katatonia's tour managers, and Amaran had done some shows or festivals with Katatonia.
They were both announced as temporary touring members as the band didn’t have time to find and audition permanent members, but they wound up joining the band full time.
TouringDuring rehearsals for the new material, Katatonia realized they'd either need to hire a touring keyboard player or use backing tracks. They didn't have time to deal with finding a new member, and decided to use the backing tracks, which led to them using in-ear monitors for the first time.
They did indeed tour a lot for this album, going to new places like Australia, South America, Israel, and India. Setlist.fm shows 2010 as having the most shows in one year. They toured to support Night is the New Day and in 2011 they also celebrated the 10th anniversary of Last Fair Deal Gone Down. A lot of the shows were sold out and the tours went well. The new members were more active on stage than the Norrman brothers had been. Anders felt that the band had finally become a great live band.
Last Fair Day Gone Night (2013)
1st set (CD1 - Last Fair Deal Gone Down)
1. Dispossession 05:36
2. Chrome 05:14
3. We Must Bury You 02:50
4. Teargas 03:23
5. I Transpire 05:56
6. Tonight's Music 04:20
7. Clean Today 04:23
8. The Future of Speech 05:40
9. Passing Bird 03:38
10. Sweet Nurse 03:57
11. Don't Tell a Soul 05:42
2nd set (CD2)
1. Brave 10:16
2. Nephilim 04:27
3. My Twin 03:44
4. I Break 04:21
5. Right into the Bliss 05:04
6. The Promise of Deceit 04:18
7. Wait Outside 03:38
8. The Longest Year 04:39
9. July 04:45
10. New Night 04:28
11. Dissolving Bonds 03:35
12. Forsaker 04:05
In 2011 they performed and recorded their second live album/dvd and released it in 2013. The first half of the show was Last Fair Deal Gone Down in its entirety. I love the studio album, but I'm also happy to have these songs performed by Jonas after he had really found his voice and he sounds fantastic here. The second half of the set features Night is the New Day but they also managed to play tracks from most of their other albums and even throw in some bonus tracks. Jonas revives his harsh vocals to perform Brave. The package also includes a documentary where I've taken a lot of the information in my write ups from.
You can watch the full set here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmWAJq5Lk5YPersonal notesEarlier I said that Viva Emptiness was the beginning of six perfect albums. But Night Is the New Day is the beginning of four… even better albums than the first two.
I absolutely love Viva Emptiness and The Great Cold Distance and wouldn't change anything about either of them, but I like the rest even more. I don't mean to over hype this - this is my personal preference and I don't expect everyone to agree - I’m pretty sure that The Great Cold Distance is the overall fan favorite (and I definitely think TAC would prefer The Great Cold Distance over Night Is the New Day). Opinions seem to be all over the place with their albums and in all kinds of combinations. For me, the vocals are just a little bit better, the lyrics are a little bit better, my emotional reaction is just a little bit stronger; everything is just right.
Night is the New Day was my first Katatonia album, though I didn’t really get into it until after the next one when I then came back to it. It was recommended by a friend at the end of 2009, along with the first Subsignal album. I reported back that I liked Night is the New Day but I’m not sure if I listened to it more than a couple times. I’d been a fan of Sieges Even so I put more of my attention to Subsignal instead, and I’m not quick about exploring new music.
In 2011, I was excited to discover that Opeth, a band I’d never been able to get into but always wanted to, was doing an all clean vocals tour. It was finally my chance.
Katatonia was opening for them. On the day of the show, I listened to Night Is the New Day while I was at work, and I remember being really taken with Forsaker and hoping they’d play it at the show. When it got to that chorus - “the dark will rise…” I was like “OK, there’s something here.” It was different from whatever else I was listening to. I remember thinking “ok, I guess darkness is kind of their thing” but not in a dismissive way, and that surprised me. I think I had a vague notion that a band with that kind of darkness theme wouldn’t interest me and that I would be dismissive of it. (And in retrospect, I perhaps wasn’t really all that self aware. For example, I love Riverside, and many people comment on them being sad and melancholic and dark - I never particularly thought of it that way though.) Despite liking Forsaker, I kind of thought that I wanted the rest of the album to be heavier. (I was wrong of course.)
My first Katatonia showI'm going to write more than I originally planned - to counter some of the disparaging comments about Katatonia as a live band from earlier in the thread.
I went with a friend and we missed most of the first song because the show was sold out and we had to find people with extra tickets. It was very cold outside but hot inside; it was already packed when we made our way inside and there was barely room to move onto the floor from the… atrium.
We didn't even bother trying to get much closer - we moved a few feet away from the entrance and stayed put.
The stage was small and Katatonia didn't really have any room in front of Opeth's drums and their own, so there were two guys crammed together on either side of the kit. I remember thinking it was odd that the singer had his hair in his face pretty much the whole time, but it was fine. It was a really really good set. Heavier than I expected and than I’m sure you might think, yet mesmerizing. Their stage presence was perfectly fine, better than fine; fitting for their music and all of them were in motion much of the time. They might not have traveled from their designated stations, but they were moving and the crowd was really into it and it was a *great* show.
Maybe I had the benefit here of knowing pretty much nothing about them. I didn't know any of their names even. I didn't know that Jonas supposedly had stage fright. I hadn't seen them in the past to have any negative impressions if they had been a worse live band before. I thought the hair in his face was odd like I said, but I didn't really care and in a way it was fitting. It wasn't unacceptable to me whatsoever. Maybe he really was panicking, but it didn't seem that way, and if he was, that's really only a negative for him, not me. He still got up there and did it. He sounded great, he was headbanging as were the rest of them, I don't remember what he said to the crowd but whatever it was I didn't think anything of it. I was there to see Opeth, I had no reason to be biased, if I thought they were a bad live band I'd have said so and probably taken even longer to really discover them. Instead, that show made me more interested in them… even to the point that when I went back to listen to Night Is the New Day and still didn't think it was heavy enough*, I thought maybe they were one of those bands that's better live than on disc. Which now seems ridiculous given how I think their albums are pretty much the best thing ever, but I 100% stand by saying they're a great live band, and that was a great show.
*Looking back, I don’t really think “heavy” is the right word. It’s not that I was only listening to super heavy stuff at the time, or that I’ve ever really been one to require my music to be super heavy. Whatever it was, I just need more time with the songs.
In the end, I wound up liking them a lot better than Opeth (who was great; perfectly fine, no complaints, but I think they were way more static on stage than Katatonia and wonder if people get on their case about their live show. Or is it just that people know Jonas has/had stage fright so they're hyper aware and ready to criticize everything? Was is it that people expect?). My friend also liked their set a lot and thought it was intense.
So… I still didn’t do a deep dive into Katatonia immediately, but they were now on my radar to see live again and I of course listened to Night Is the New Day a little more. My general thought was that I liked it, and Katatonia would be a new band for me to like. The deep dive happened after the next album, and when I went back to Night is the New Day at that point, it slowly, song by song, started to become one of my favorite albums. 🙂
The songs Forsaker - see the above; this will always be one of my favorite songs since it made such a big impression on me. I’ve seen it at every Katatonia show I’ve been to and will never get tired of it.
The Longest Year - this is one of the earlier tracks to click with me; partly because they played it on the next tour and it was fantastic; I remember getting chills listening to this… "find the one…"
Idle Blood - I remember playing this album in the car with someone who suddenly stopped talking to say “what a delightful song.” And it is.
Onward into Battle - this is a great deep cut that sounds sooo good live. Though it sounds like a power metal song title, it's anything but. This song is emotional and ethereal and chill inducing and that chorus…
Liberation and
The Promise of Deceit - these two clicked at the same time for me, and I remember playing them over and over and over again. I had a bunch of miscellaneous Katatonia tracks on shuffle when I’d go for a walk, and if one of these two would come on, I’d take it off shuffle, play both tracks, repeat them, and repeat them again. And maybe again.
Liberation - very heavy; you might not necessarily think so and then you see it live and it’s a wall of guitars and it’s so awesome. It also gives me chills when I see it live.
The Promise of Deceit - maybe not the type of song I’d have expected to like before Katatonia, but I can’t get enough of it. The second I hear “Evening,” I smile, and I’m transported. This song alone was motivation for me to see them perform Night Is the New Day in its entirety in Europe for the 10 year anniversary. And it was worth it.
Nephilim - this is such a heavy song. I don't mean in a headbanging way, though there was headbanging when they played it live. But it's so dark and foreboding and full of dread. The way the guitar and keyboards work together is perfect. The way it starts with the chorus, if you'd call it that, and then goes to the verses which are mellow but fit the vibe perfectly… I like this song *a lot* yet it's not one of my favorites off the album; the album is just so so good.
New Night and
Inheritance - probably the biggest contributors to my initial thoughts that the album wasn’t heavy enough. I’d listen to them and think they were pleasant and enjoyable but nothing more. But then…
New Night crept up on me and I’m not sure when I came to love it, but I did. I started to feel some strong emotions when listening to it.
Inheritance - I remember listening to it one day and getting chills and thinking I’d never heard it like that before, and why hadn’t I? It was stunning.
Day and Then the Shade - another track I got into earlier on. They played this too, and it's heavy and beautiful all in one. I'll have a separate post for lyrics but this is definitely a song where the imagery in the lyrics makes me feel like I'm there. I'm rising over glass cathedrals myself, and it kind of feels like flying in my head.
Departer - this is really magical. An incredible closing track. I’ll confess that I’d much rather Jonas just sing the whole thing, but Krister Linder’s voice is fine and I know that Jonas is a fan of his and he was thrilled to have him on the album.
Ashen - another bonus track that’s just as good as anything on the album. I love the contrast here with the heavy verses and the softer chorus.
Sold Heart - and another fantastic bonus track. This has to be one of my favorite songs, but there are so many. It's just so beautiful and I think you'll be getting close to the full lyrics in the next post.
Day and Then the Shade (Frank Default mix) and
Idle Blood (Linje 14) - two beautiful mixes of the corresponding songs. I do prefer the originals, but love listening to these as well. I like how you really get to hear the vocals in a different light and get to hear all of the vocal nuances.
Topic: Katatonia Discography Discussion: Sky Void of Stars (2023) (Read 23716 times)