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After the bad review I gave to Katatonia's latest
cd,
I got some pretty nasty feedback. Of course, giving it spins later I still
stand by my scoring. And that prompted people to ask if I could even
handle melodic music!
(Of course, anyone reading this publication even
infrequently all this time knows better). I must say, this release popped
out of nowhere and is what Katatonia SHOULD have attempted to sound like.
This is a wonderful, emotional, melancholic and melodic release, so all
the tags like gothic metal, atmospheric, emotional, whatever do apply. The
guitar work is both beautiful and heavy, utilizing both acoustic and
heavier passages all within the same song! The vocal work is truly
astounding, and if it wasn't for the horrible intro, this would be near
perfect! "Pale Song" starts the disc off and many songs start and finish
like this one. What really surprised me were the almost blast beat styled
double bass drum work that is in place on many tracks! The title track
starts off with solitary acoustic guitar work and makes use of minimal
instrumentation to drive the point home. "If only you could see me now'
and "We don't need no music" are fantastic examples of music that is not
only relaxing, melodic and moving, but also containing extremely catchy
and dynamically strong songwriting. You can tell there is much feeling put
into this masterpiece of work. I had to take off a few more points for the
odd vocal samples (in a foreign language again, and though I'm not an
expert it sounds like French) starting my alltime favorite track "We don't
need no music". To end off the album, you'll hear amazingly fast
instrumentation that sounds susceptibly like black metal, and you'll be
saying this is the heaviest track of the disc. Vocals do come into play
later, rather gothic sounding they are, but this was once a death metal
band and they don't feel the need to let you forget it, even if this
material is so far and above whatever they did in the past. Forget
Katatonia, THIS is the emotionally charged masterpiece of 2003, and it's
so much better than I ever thought this kind of music could be.
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