It would be difficult for me to fully express what I feel I owe to Katatonia without sounding foolish. So I wont, not here. Nor would it be possible to say how disappointed I have been by their output since the almost incomprehensible brilliance of 'Viva Emptiness' gave way to the lukewarm sounds of 'The Great Cold Distance' and 'Night Is The New Day'. So oddly this reissue of their fifth album, 2001s 'Last Fair Deal Gone Down', is something I was keen to return to but also a little wary. Sometimes, you see, you don't want to revisit old times.
It's probably fair to say that more than most bands supporters, Katatonia fans rarely agree on their best album. 'Brave Murder Day's genre sliding mix of black metal meeting doom, depression and post rock way way ahead of its time? 'Discouraged Ones' clean vocals shock and Metallica meets the Cure introversion? The loneliness and poetry of 'Tonight’s Decision'? Or indeed this one.
This is treated to a nice hardback book version this time with the four extra tracks from the Teargas and Tonight’s Music EPs as a sweetener. And that’s the last time 'sweet' can be used here.
From the bleak album title and the picture of the type of toilet where only the most desperate and sordid deals can be concluded this is where you come to when your fall stops. “Burning down my house to make something happen. . . “ sings Jonas Renkse in anguished but beaten down tones on 'Chrome'. Like most things here it is a statement of a bone deep depression not the mock 'woe-is-me' emo commerciality looked upon so unbelievably in the outsider’s song 'Passing Bird'. “She wears a black dress, she pretends her life is a mess. . . . To much fucking emo its false I know. . . “.
This is clinging on by tearing fingernails stuff, desperate dying human spirit music. It makes the awful beauty here all the harder to bear. Listen to the haunting cascade riff on 'Teargas' as you hear the words “is this your way of telling me another has been found. . . “ or the synth backed sweep of 'I Transpire' and feel how raw they rub you as the almost Pink Floyd at breaking point vocals bring you in halfway through some story of life gone so badly wrong, a style which reached its zenith on the next album 'Viva Emptiness'.
This is not deathly heavy metal, just metal heavy with despair. Delicate notes and brittle words give way to great falling curtains of fuzzed out guitar or disorientating siren like guitar loops as though you have reached that point in the night where the alcohol has your brain in a death grip. The descriptive in the quiet lyrics is so effective and so very simple; violence is brutal and squalid and recognised as such. The songs often expose a craving for emotional company so great and yet the need to be alone remaining overpowering that stasis engulfs you. Something that rings so unbearably true if you've been there in that terrible place. Vulnerability, raw souls in a flood they cant escape. Things no longer in control.
Emotionally difficult, deceptively complex and musically adept, this is Katatonia approaching their zenith. If you are prepared to open yourself to this harrowing and are resilient enough to take its hopeless vision as a whole, then you need to hear it.
It isn’t for everyone, and it is not to be taken when you are at a low ebb, but if this was in search of a label then the label would be 'Classic'.
So if you are not overly familiar with the band, or having only heard their last two albums and wonder what all the fuss is about, then 'Last Fair Deal Gone Down' is as fine a place to start as any.
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Gizmo
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