Katatonia: The Great Cold Distance

Katatonia's previous album Viva Emptiness took a step further from the band's doom metal past towards more modern and accessible sounds. On their latest The Great Cold Distance, the band push their hard hitting and melancholy driven style one step further. Here, the riffs are a bit heavier in spots, the dark and atmospheric passages more ominous, and the vocals, while still catchy, mourn with anguish, anger, and despair.

After a few spins, the melodies and catchy guitar riffs of songs like "Soil's Song", "Leaders" and the alluring "My Twin" really stand out and stick in your head. Many have stated over the years that the tempo of most Katatonia songs tend to stay in a similar pattern, and that is true here on The Great Cold Distance as well for the most part, but there's just enough variance on each piece to keep you coming back for more initially till the songs each really start to open themselves up to the listener fully. A nice break from the lulling style can be heard on the Opeth sounding "Consternation", a tune with huge and cascading guitar passages that are pretty complex, as well as a varied vocal attack from Jonas Renske. The band mixes spacey prog rock with huge walls of doom riffs on "Follower", while "Rusted" has some pastoral folk influences to go along with the dark metal vibe. Drummer Daniel Liljekvist gets into some tricky rhythms on "In the White", a song that also sees a passionate vocal from Renske, while "The Itch" is one of the more brutally heavy numbers on the CD. However, the ending song, "Journey Through Pressure", is a psychedelic and progressive metal monster, with thick guitar chords, layers of spacey effects, and acid-soaked vocals. This song builds and builds in depressed intensity until it slowly fades out, a fitting way to end a monster album.

You get the feeling that Katatonia are close to breaking through to mainstream acceptance, although in the long run their dark and depressing style might still find it hard to catch on with the traditional metal audience. However, The Great Cold Distance is a major musical treat of dark, progressive, and psychedelic metal sounds that expands upon their smash Viva Emptiness even further. Let the accolades begin!

Track Listing
1 Leaders
2 Deliberation
3 Soil's Song
4 My Twin
5 Consternation
6 Follower
7 Rusted
8 Increase
9 July
10 In the White
11 The Itch
12 Journey Through Pressure

Added: April 4th 2006
Reviewer: Pete Pardo
Score:
Related Link: Katatonia Website
Hits: 7601
Language: english

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