(Peaceville) Total Time:48.38
This is the eighth full length album for the Swedish melancholic band KATATONIA after a three-year absence since their last work “The Great Cold Distance”. I must say I was a little bit confused concerning my feelings and thoughts for “Night Is The New Day”...
During the first hearing of the album I couldn’t do otherwise than to be bored, or to be hypnotized exactly, but not in a good way…Each next song felt like a resumer of the previous one, having as a result a circling outcome of emotions, ideas, lyrical themes and choruses. Also ,this work was nearly as heavy as expected taking into account the sampler of the album and intro song “Forsaker”, which is after all the most powerful and heavy track of “Night Is The New Day”. Noticing the similarities in their music style as also in the vocal part between KATATONIA and Opeth, I can say that it is fact acceptable up to a reasonable point but sometimes it harms the source and the origin of KATATONIA.
In spite of all the above, the album does have some good moments and responsible for this is (for starters) Jonas’ amazing voice that can make the listener get into the core of each song and along with the sense of melancholy, the atmospheric synths , the low tempo rhythm and wonderful guitar distortion, deliver the essence of the band - in small portions I must add. The album was recorded and mixed in July -August 2009 at Ghost Ward, Stockholm, Sweden.The production is as always sharp and clear offering to the listener a nice “view” to KATATONIA’s bass and guitar lines, with leading instrument this time Jonas’ voice. Besides ‘Forsaker”, some other tracks that outstand in others are “Day And Then The Shade”, “New Night” and “Liberation”.
I did not enjoy this one as I did with “Viva Emptiness” or “The Great Cold Distance” but I would like to see KATATONIA always on the top of my likings and hopefully it won’t take them long before they rush to the top…
