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Rating: "For funerals to come" is the mini album precursor to the seminal "Brave murder day", which brought Katatonia fame and transformed them from a cult underground group to a leading act, later imitated throughout half of Europe.
The work in question contains four tracks, including two real songs, an acoustic piece, and a noise-styled outro, and it is a little gem by the then very young Nyström and Renkse. "Funeral Wedding" opens the album with a piercing riff immediately followed by Nyström’s singing (in this, Renkse only handles the clean vocals) truly anguished and surprisingly expressive. The sounds range from heavy-gothic à la Paradise Lost (the "Shades of god" period) to others reminiscent of the darker Black Sabbath, although all revisited through the melancholic notes of the previous "Dance of December souls". Very melodic solos and acoustic phrasing follow one another with brilliance, a true autumn piece. "Shades of emeral fields" follows closely with the oppressive bleak atmospheres of the first track but with an added touch of originality due to the insertion of Renkse's fragile and touching voice that drags us into a whirlwind of November tears. Excellent final riffing and the solo harmonies of Nyström’s weeping guitar. "For funerals to come" lives on acoustic notes announcing an apocalypse of rain and shattered dreams. Brief but tearful in the band’s best style, while "Epistel" is an outro of noises and screams, a minute of nightmares.
For those who want to appreciate the darker side of the two from Stockholm, this is a truly interesting chapter. New fans may not like it, but I recommend it anyway. In any case, I want to clarify that the dimension of today's Katatonia expresses itself with the same intensity as back then. Simply the sounds and harmonies have changed, in respect of a logical evolution.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Funeral Wedding (08:40)
Open life beneath
Her glory stains the hearse
Procession watch the rain
Mourns the opposite birth
For the wind hopes to die
Far away from home
Same death serves all / spirits of what will be
Dancing the walls
Scent of silver / through those halls
Shroud of filth embrace me
As the statue stares so cold
Black blue eyes of mourning
Child born to die
Silent tombs wait outside
Monuments of dreamless rains
Torn by the stars
Heaven calls
Burning with sin
Free from within
Endless spikes of certain death, come closer at my hand
Where they will burn in sin, restless wait
The coffin gaps open, laughing at my fear
Silent tombs wait outside
Monuments of dreamless rains
Torn by the stars
Heaven calls
Burning with sin
Free from within
02 Shades of Emerald Fields (05:24)
Dancing through the silent waves
The shimmering moonlight
Over lost angels remains
Whispering through gloomy halls
Beneath the gentle soft caress
Of dreaming shadows
Flowing steams of silver
Through tidal torrents of grief
Time was never there for us
The final tide took the last ones away
Buried visions - of sunrise
Beneath the seas - of torrid soil
Slowly sinking - in the mire
Shades of - emerald fields
Our eyes can't stand the flames
Single sparkles hiding in our palms
They linger before dying away
Fading from out sigh
Loathsome are the ways of those
Who the meadows shall receive
For every glimpse of daylight must vanish
And every soul submit to tide
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