KATATONIA - Night Is The New Day

Album: Night Is The New Day
Artist : Katatonia
Label: Peaceville Records

With an impressive back catalogue to their name already ( 10 albums ), Katatonia bring us 'Night Is The New Day'; but how does it compare to the band's other releases? Well let me put it this way, if I were a salesman trying to sell you this album, I would probably play the first 20 - 30 seconds from each track and you would probably be convinced that it was as good as say, 'The Great Cold Distance'. However, after hearing the rest you would definitely feel cheated, as just about every track on the album starts off with good intentions but seems to just fizzle out before it really goes anywhere.

Some of the tracks don’t really live up to their title either, for instance, 'Onward Into Battle', the fourth track from the album, conjured up images of axes embedded in skulls, the sound of swords hitting shields and the deep growl of a battle cry. What I actually got was more like handbags at dawn. Every song suffers from the fact that it never really tries to do anything, it’s hard to believe this is the same band that have released some excellent rock songs over the years.

'Night Is The New Day' is a much more dark and brooding offer than their previous albums, but really lacks any energy. There are some genuine uplifting moments when things start to rock a bit, but these never really last long enough to make the track stick in your mind. If however, you are looking for a mellow relaxing album then you could do worse than this. There are some nice tunes here with some very good bass lines holding it all together, the vocals are strong and there are some nice orchestrated moments that give the music a dream like feel.

To sum up the album then, it’s the sort of album you would put on at the end of the day to unwind to.

Tracklisting

1. Forsaker
2. The longest year
3. Idle blood
4. Onward into battle
5. Liberation
6. The promise of deceit
7. Nephilim
8. New night
9. Inheritance
10. Day and then the shade
11. Departer

Reviewer: Alan Jones