Album Review: Katatonia's challenges our royal status in "Dead End Kings"

     As "The Parting" begins on Katatonia's ninth studio album, "Dead End Kings", it scolds us for hiding behind the scenes of life and, "Taking it all for granted/ Like freedom/It's something you'll never have."  Enlightened notion, considering the fact that most who follow Katatonia, a Swedish metal group out of Gotenburg, Sweden paint them as pioneers in the death and doom metal musical genre. Scattered throughout the 11 tracks that compromise Dead End Kings, it pours heavily on themes of  death and belonging, but underlying hints of light reflect that Katatonia is suggesting that even in death there is hope. By the time the album reaches the third track, "Hypnone", which loosely translated means chemistry, it's clear they're balancing their own chemistry between death and participating in life, "I need the sound of rain/Wearing dependence down./The line must be kept so thin/To live near life/Not within." The clincher in the track contains the lyrics that proudly stamped the name of the album, declares that even when things seem most hopeful all you have to do is look within me and find my own defeat, "Reflect my eyes/And strip this creation of mine/Tomorrow is so long/The dead end king is here/Black wings upon his back."
     In an interview on Blabbermouth.net, June 13, 2012, Jonas Renkse, co-founder of Katatonia and lead singer, commented that, Dead End Kings, "is about the corridors of our mind from where there is no return. Be a king or queen in your own right in these hallways, even at the dead end. Carry your burden with pride. That's what we are doing, twenty years and counting. Kings, because we believe in what we are creating, in our own disturbing faith."  What introduced me first to Katatonia, was a Myspace music suggestion while searching for melodic metal bands, I first heard the haunting graveyard track, "Unfurl" from "July" a three-song EP released by Katatonia in 2006. Although, I'm rarely active on Myspace account anymore, I have however been an avid fan of this under-appreciated metal group since. The reason I mention the song, "Unfurl" is another such gem exists on Dead End Kings, it's fourth track, "The Racing Heart". The track beautifully marries desperate despair and one's own graceful departure. "The Racing Heart", showcases stellar lyrics from Jonas Renkse, who after 20 years into Katatonia, has perfectly crafted the haunting allure that has gained the band a dedicated following all these years. The highlight of the lyrics, wrapped in the chorus, as Renkse's regretfully aches, "If I sow a wind now/I will reap a storm/You saw me sliding away from the sun/And tomorrow/Who will come/And put their hand over mine/Mine with the burning shape of a gun."
     Another notable track, "Lethean", which from Greek Mythology, one of the four rivers from Hades, pleads, "How long/Is the pattern going to speak for you/How far can your voice reach/"Your song below the night". The pounding hook in "Lethean", keeps asking, "What took you so long/The high grass/What took you so long," as the subject of the song hides among the trees and skyline in plain sight and how after taking many life's chances, "Now/This river/This time I will." Dead End Kings, doesn't quietly fade into the night on  it's final track "Dead Letters", a brutal sonic deathscape churns "Vexation/Internal void/My dreams are getting darker and darker," which sums of the album's tug and pull between darkness and light. Overall, the album can best be described as a quintessential dark Katatonia trip, a little more refined here and there but true to the form we've come to expect. Katatonia, will once again be embarking on another tour, opening up with Opeth, with a few headlining acts in Merriam, Kansas, Farmington, New Mexico and a stop at the famed, Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood, California on May 27, before headlining alone through Europe, with stops in Germany, UK, and their homeland of Sweden. Check Katatonia.com for more tour and concert information. -
©Rafael Andrade Garza, 2013.

photo courtesy of Katatonia.com