Katatonia
Brave Murder Day

THE REVIEW

I know well that this album has already been reviewed, but I still want to continue writing. This is an album that made me passionate about Doom like few others, creating emotions in me like no other record has tried to do.

 Katatonia were not the pioneers of doom/death metal, true, but they managed to create an unmistakable style that today is the reference point for many groups of the now diminished doom/death/black metal scene (Forgotten Tomb above all).

However, this is an album that can be considered extreme doom almost only for the themes it addresses and the vocals. The drums and guitar, in fact, are faster than the normal standards of the genre. One thing that will manage to strike you at the first listen is the voice of Mikael Åkerfeldt, known singer and guitarist with Opeth. This album features his participation, which is judged by critics as one of the best performances, with one of the most convincing growls in the history of metal. Jonas Renske, on the other hand, leader and founder of Katatonia, has full control of the vocal parts only in one track and for the rest, he is entrusted only with pieces of text in screaming, due to vocal cord problems (which is why in the next few years we'll see the complete disappearance of "dirty" voice parts). He also takes care of the drums.

The opening track is entitled "Brave" and we find ourselves completely immersed in the apocalyptic atmospheres, which accompany our soul in total solitude, as if trapped in a vortex made of mere appearances and hidden truths.

"If you didn't know
All the moments
When I lose myself
I would tell the world
I'm catching flies by now
Speaking to someone
Breaking the windows
This house is dead"

The riffs used are truly enchanting, even though they are repeated throughout the duration of the song (10:17). However, this is not to be considered a flaw; it is a way to make the sense of oppression more pronounced.

The next track is "Murder," which proceeds with the same intensity without losing a beat, especially thanks to a rather full-bodied first guitar riff that naturally shifts to a slower rhythm. The voice travels at the same rhythm as the riffs and the drums, which beat in 4/4. At the end, it immediately begins with "Day," sung in clean vocals by Jonas Renske. The song's lyrics, although brief and repeated several times, are full of emotions that together with the suffering voice create almost a state of total apathy:

"Your smile has decayed
It will never be the same
I never thought I would laugh again
I should be knowing this, it used to be me"

Unlike the first two tracks, we don't find guitar riffs, but rather only keyboard passages that lose some of their initial charm towards the end, becoming repeated too many times. Hence begins "Rainroom," which in my opinion is not the weak point of the album as many say, but one of the major manifestos of anger and supplication made into a song:

"We saw it all pass by and you went by
And I can't control anything
When you said that life can't be what you want
And I really want everything

When I pray
When I believe"

You can also notice that Jonas makes his appearance again, this time with screaming vocals. It seems to be a desperate moan, serving as a backdrop to dark and narrow landscapes.

At this point, the brightest diamond of the album comes forward, "12". Immediately tones of resignation start, enchanted by a mysticism that refers us to one of the saddest lyrics ever written:

 "Black theatre of love
Violet dances cast their blood
The moon gave me flowers
For funerals to come

12 shapes bow before her
I am still one of them
12 morbid ways to die
Her beauty scares me"

Here we reach the conclusion of the album, "Endtime", a title almost from a concept album linked to the end of a chapter of our life: death, eternal sleep.

Making a last technical adjustment, we can be satisfied with the high production standards for the time and rather attracted by the artwork, depicting a dead bird. A bit more imagination, in fact, would not have hurt.

All things considered, having analyzed one of Katatonia's most successful works in all its facets, we can regard "Brave Murder Day" as an album that aimed to "break down," musically speaking, the barriers of doom as it had been conceived up to the last release "Dance of December Souls", creating album after album always different arrangements and leading our Katatonia to constantly change their skin, as befits a true artist.

This is my first review, I hope it is not boring and that it may offer a valid alternative to the one already proposed.