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Rating:
A necessary preface before starting with the actual review: this album does not contain daring freak/cosmic/post-menstrual experiments nor acrobatic instrumental virtuosity; it does not contain sterile intellectual musings for their own sake nor self-indulgent claims of innovation and/or disruption of existing music. Those who are looking for the coolest and most nonconformist indie/lo-fi band of the moment or the fetishists of pentatonic scales and technicality at all costs should refrain from listening to it. This album aims to transpose onto the staff the pain of living, existential anguish, that impotence that corrodes and weakens the will until it is reduced to a faint flicker of self-pity. And it succeeds perfectly...
Starting in the early '90s as an extremely dark death-doom metal band - author of the seminal masterpiece "Brave Murder Day", a genuine milestone of the genre - Katatonia gradually arrived, after releasing an intriguing series of singles and mini CDs that I recommend everyone to find, at this immense "Discouraged Ones", a significant album of transition between the band's old course and the new one, more oriented towards dark wave sounds and atmospheres, yet in the vein of the most introspective and desolate goth metal. The nebulous stream of consciousness conveyed by the morbid doom of their beginnings is here partially set aside in favor of a more traditional song form, but not for that reason more banal.
The album opens with the dreary spite of the compelling "I Break", perhaps the most energetic piece of the lot. Renske's unmistakable voice, one of the most expressive in all of rock, is a subdued and heartrending sob, a visceral anthem to resignation and nihilistic self-annihilation. Eerie in the neurotic metropolitan alienation of "nerve" and in the chilling chants of the beautiful "Saw You Drown" - perhaps the best song ever written by Katatonia - it evokes moments of evocative contemplation in the crepuscular stases of "deadhouse" (another highlight of the album). "Gone" (just over two minutes long) expresses - with the peculiar guitar minimalism that is somewhat the band's trademark - the lacerating regret and impotent anger in the face of losing something that fleetingly but intensely belonged to us, only to vanish forever from our lives. It is a decadent and unhealthy universe, that of Katatonia; an urban fresco of desolate transience, of deaf indifference, of the aching volatility of affections and relationships. The subdued "Instrumental", a diaphanous dance of changing night flames, and "Last Resort", with its funereal and introspective pace, also deserve mention.
In conclusion, an album to be lived rather than listened to, not reducible to a mere scale of numerical values and destined to evoke strongly contrasting emotions: indifference or total adoration, no middle ground.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 I Break (04:21)
Sounds of imbalance
Sleeps through the never
The artificial lightsource
Is creeping with flies
And this time I break
I will never make
Another day
Defiant to what's delivered
I will find a way
To sever myself
Exit all today
You can't see this
Did you ever say
I break sever
I will find a way
Visit me when I'm there
The weakness of hope
Is the strenght of decline
Remember whar's past ways
And what I've become
The joy if not beig
Something I need
I'm only weather
But only to me
02 Stalemate (04:18)
What I am supposed to be
In my life
In your life
In our life
In this life
In shut the door and close my sight
At the end of the day
It's not the way that it used to be
There's no way I'll see
The beginning of things to come
Trapped in the ways of the silent and weak
In my life
In your life
In our life
In this life
In shut the door and close my sight
At the end of the day
03 Deadhouse (04:35)
Somehow better without this
Headlights fuck the city to hell
Somewhere I'm bloody broken
No sensations nevermore
What do you say when you speak
I sense no time
Discouraged television sleep
Not awake until it's fucking dark
Somehow I never leave
This deadhouse
Somehow I don't mind being gone
And if you really think you've seen me
I have to prove you
That you're wrong
05 Cold Ways (05:20)
I can't do what you do
I'm just able to tear it down
Yeah
Stay in a cold minute of sleep
See the world
Right through the ether
Twisting names inside of me
Electric atmosphere to be
Must carry on one last time
Cannot end what has begun
In your eyes
You're alive
But in my eyes
You'r a lie
You can't do what I do
I'm just able to ruin you yeah
Stay in the cold ways of winter
See myself right through the ether
In my eyes
You're the lie
06 Gone (02:47)
A dead start in my head
And the day's been laid
The things i really want
Always torn from my heart
You never saw the way
How i wanted you to stay
And now you're gone
I'm on my own
When i was thinking this
Was something permanent
You were already thinking
Of going away
08 Nerve (04:30)
High white ways
Shattered by rain
Pale dead walls
Nerves pushed in pain
Red light faced
Mirrors of the dead
People in the archways
Eyes full of lead
Always closing down myself
Lower sights and never see
Worlds of noise and worlds of light
Expecting not to be
High white ways
Shattered by rain
Pale dead walls
Nerves pushed in pain
Red light faced
Mirrors of the dead
People in the archways
Eyes full of lead
Always closing down myself
Lower sights and never see
Worlds of noise and worlds of light
Expecting not to be
Not close enough for you
To hear a breath or steal a sigh
But just close enough for me
To take a step and pass you by
Always closing down myself
Lower sights and never see
Worlds of noise and worlds of light
Expecting not to be
Not close enough for you
To hear a breath or steal a sigh
But just close enough for me
To take a step and pass you by
09 Saw You Drown (05:02)
As through your shattered eyes
It all came together
And your heart cries
Weeping through the weather
Another way to change your mind
I'm weaker than they say
To leave this all behind
The only way to stay
Don't you know
I'm the end of what we'll be
And right below us
The last thing you'll see
In the water
I saw you drown
Down the water
I Saw you drown
In the water
I saw you drown
Down the water
I Saw you drown
As through my shattered sight
You're no longer here
And my heart cries
Sleeping through the light
Another way to change my mind
Never is the day
To leave this all behind
The only way to stay
Don't you know
I'm the end of what we'll be
And right below us
The last thing you'll see
In the water
I saw you drown
Down the water
I Saw you drown
In the water
I saw you drown
Down the water
I Saw you drown
In the water
I saw you drown
Down the water
I Saw you drown
In the water
I saw you drown
Down the water
I Saw you drown
11 Distrust (04:55)
Running my way towards oblivion
Inside my head electric insomnia
In your mind i'm fed with distrust
Heading for anything better than this
I want to be forgotten
I want you to forgive
How i'm losing all this
It's just the way i live
Running my way towards oblivion
Inside my head smokescreen's gone
Leaving all this to be undone
Heading for anything better than this
I want to be forgotten
I want you to forgive
How i'm losing all this
It's just the way i live
Running my way towards oblivion
Outside my head only the dark
In your mind i'm the end of it all
Heading for anything better than this
I want to be forgotten
I want you to forgive
How i'm losing all this
It's just the way i live
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Other reviews
By RobyMichieletto
Discouraged Ones is an album marking the transition from growling vocal tones to harmonic and clean singing.
The album stands out as a very solid work, built on excellent songs with concrete and heavy riffs emphasizing dramatic tones.
