Metalheads of Australia, although being treated to some major international acts in recent years have yet to see


Katatonia


arrive on our shores. From their beginnings as a death/doom metal band (Renkse was once dubbed “Lord Seth” alongside founding guitarist Anders Nystrom, aka Blakkheim) to their constant evolution through gothic singer-songwriter oriented metal, shoegaze, alternative rock and even electro touches, Katatonia has been a band that captured the attention of metalheads – like them or not – for their constant innovation and boundary pushing, keeping journalists and fans alike wondering what they might come up with next.

“It’s like a dream come true for the band,”
Jonas Renkse says, talking about coming to Australia after almost decades of waiting. “Ever since the beginning of the band we’ve gotten fan mail from there so we know we have a following there. We’ve heard so many good things about playing in Australia – especially from our friends in Opeth – it’s great to get the chance to finally come over.” 

A recommendation from Opeth? What could be better? The connection between Katatonia and Opeth stems back many years; Opeth guitarist/vocalist Mikael Akerfeldt stepped in to perform death vocals on their 1996 doom metal opus Brave Murder Day after Jonas was instructed by doctors not to aggravate a throat condition. Since then members of Opeth and Katatonia have performed together on stage as the brutal death metal outfit Bloodbath. They’ve almost been kindred spirits, as Renkse explains.

“Oh, we’ve always had a strong connection [with Opeth], we’ve been close friends with them since the early 90s. We’ve been following each other’s bands for a long time, seeing all the shifts and changes we’ve had. I think that puts us together even more. We’ve toured together back in the day and played a lot of gigs together. It’s a good friendship and it spills over into the music. We hang out a lot, me and Mikael with our families and stuff. We’re just good friends.” 

That friendship may not have blossomed if it wasn’t for a 1995 decision by Renkse and Nystrom to forge on with Katatonia after almost “breaking up” for a year. It was spurred by a feeling that the band’s well of creativity had dried for good. It was a bizarre turn of events – their year long hiatus was ended by sharing a love for two bands – Kent, the hugely successful (in Scandinavia) Swedish alternative rock band and Slowdive, a shoegaze/electro goth band – that rekindled their passion for Katatonia and metal music, albeit moving away from oppressive “doom metal” genre boundaries. 

"When we eventually wanted to do something together again we wanted it to be different; we didn’t want to do a second part of the first album, you know,” Jonas recalls.

"We were listening to the different stuff in the mean time which we thought we could kind of incorporate into our own sound, still keeping it, you know, doom metal based – which was the style we really loved back then. But you know, listening to Slowdive, you get the idea of adding this atmospheric sound to everything that you do and I think it worked really well on [
Brave Murder Day
.]

Every album that Katatonia has made reveals the results of a musical experiment that runs the gamut of blending metal with alt rock, shoegaze, atmosphere and even a streak of cyberpunk terror as “evidenced” in their 2003 effort
Viva Emptiness
– although not strictly a concept album, it does have themes of crime, love, loss, violence, peace and redemption. But is it?

"Well,” Jonas wryly explains, “some of the songs are about those kinds of things; it’s some kind of weird interest at the time; I kind of wanted to write something about it you know. [Crime] became a big part of the album – [songs like] Criminals, Evidence, it’s about all those things.”

Katatonia aren’t really a band that write songs in the traditional sense but are more interested in creating different sorts of moods instead of dumping a “slab of doom metal in front of someone’s face,” Jonas says.“We get older, we get more picky with whatever we’re doing. Back in the day, we were teenagers. Just playing guitar with distortion was good enough, you know. But now we have to be satisfied ourselves and do a lot of hard work in the atmosphere department of the music to make it really happen: the dynamics and everything is more important than ever." 

The meticulousness of their songwriting and recording has lead to the release of albums becoming increasingly distant – The Great Cold Distance was released three years after Viva Emptiness and last year’s The Night is the New Day was almost four years between innings. In metal, the long gaps between albums are rare, with many bands on a very strict one year “release-tour-write-record-release” cycle. The long waits are an exercise in patience: a sign of maturity. 

“Well now a days, it’s a bit different for us,” Jonas explains. “Back in the day when we were doing Tonight’s Decision and Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Anders was the main songwriter back then and he was always writing music. He’d just sit at home and write music.

“Now we have families, we tour more, we have lots of other things to do. To be able to start writing an album is kind of delicate – we can’t force it any more. Not that we did it back then; songs just came up and we had a good time with it. I feel that it’s such an important thing to write an album. You just can’t force yourself to do it just because of time limits or whatever. You have to…wait for the album to come to you.

"You won’t know it’s potential until you’re actually working on it.” 

Jonas as vocalist writes the majority of the lyrics for the band in his own modern poetic style, using textual sampling (as heard on the track Soil’s Song) amongst other techniques that aren’t commonly found in metal. He insists there’s no real process involved; it just “comes out”. 

"It’s hard to say; I do a lot of re-writing when I’m trying to finish off the lyrics – I try to make everything as good as possible, of course. Sometimes I change things because I find them too simple; I want to keep it simple but at the same time I want keep it a little bit abstract. It’s always a fine line between doing something stupid and doing something beautiful.”

Jonas had the rare honor of working alongside his “favourite singer for fifteen years” in the chilling yet poignant closer to
Night is the New Day,
entitled "Departer" – Krister Linder. Linder was the vocalist for Swedish band Dive and has performed as a solo artist for many years and more recently became vocalist in the metal band Enter the Hunt. Jonas has been fortunate enough to know him personally. 

It was much to Jonas’ delight to hear that Krister “really liked” Katatonia and asked to collaborate with them on a track. 

“Yeah, he asked us if he could be a part of the new album,” he recalls. “He wanted to do a song with me. That was just like a dream come true for me. I think he’s got the voice for something really dramatic and atmospheric like that last song on the album. I’m so happy that he could actually do it. Because he’s…he’s something else. He’s a fantastic singer.” 

A few years ago in an interview, the band revealed that they weren’t fans of live music and all but shied away from touring and even appearing at shows for bands they enjoyed. Recently, after a successful North American and European tour, they’re set to journey toward new territory for the band – Australia at No Sleep ‘Til and even India. Jonas puts to bed their charge that live music wasn’t for them.

“This used to be true,” Jonas clarifies for us, “but not any more. Back in the day we – well, I – was kind of nervous to do the whole live thing. I felt like I would much rather have been in the studio working on the atmospherics of every song. I thought it was kind of difficult to reproduce live because there are so many factors you have to take into consideration. Sometimes you go up on stage in broad daylight…I just thought it kind of killed the atmosphere. 

“Since we’ve been doing a lot of touring for the last few albums I’ve grown to actually like playing live.” 

Luckily for ticket holders at No Sleep ‘Til across the country, they’ll get a great show from Katatonia, although for a first venture into Australia, they’re also experiencing a new form of tour – the festival tour. Australian metalheads are very grateful to have them but at the same time, very surprised they are playing at a hybrid punk/metal festival instead of a series of intimate club shows. 

“We’re excited to play with Megadeth, whom we know very well. But some others I’ve heard of but I haven’t really been listening to very much. NOFX…I’ve heard the name, I haven’t really heard the music,” he laughs.

“I mean it’s exactly what we thought as well; we didn’t expect to do it like this the first time around. We’ve been wanting to do Australia for such a long time and we always thought ‘It’s going to happen some time’ and we’re gonna go there and play some small clubs and have a good time.

“But all of a sudden we get this opportunity to actually do this festival tour – we’ve never been on a tour like this before. Doing it for the first time in a place where you haven’t been…it’s kind of weird. A lot of people that aren’t into Katatonia might not like the [punk] bands that much and it’s pretty expensive to see Katatonia for the first time and you might pay to see us for an hour and all the other bands and you might not want to see them,” he laughs. 

“But still; I hope for the best, you know?”