KATATONIA (Live)

At The Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, U.K., May 7, 2017

On first view, The Brudenell Social Club is not the place you’d expect to find a band such as Katatonia. An old school Northern working men’s club is more the place to find dodgy cover bands and politically incorrect stand-up comedians. However, all credit to the club and promoters they aren’t half pulling in some great bands so anywhere that keeps Metal alive and kicking gets the thumbs up here.

Indeed this is not Katatonia’s first visit here, as just a couple of years ago they played a stripped down show on the short but very sweet run of acoustic shows captured so stunningly on their Sanctitude album. It may not have the ambiance of the Union Chapel but The Brudenell can’t be faulted for creating a cracking atmosphere.

A subtle, understated blue hue welcomed Katatonia onto the stage as they opened with Last Song Before The Fade from their latest release, the excellent Fall Of Hearts, an album that sees them heading into a more Progressive and atmospheric direction.

A Fall Of Hearts featured highly throughout the night with the up-tempo Gothic tinged Serein with its dramatic guitar hook and the more melancholic Old Hearts Fall highlighting the diversity of their new material.

Fans of their earlier material weren’t left disappointed either with an emotion tinged Criminals coming early on along with fellow Viva Emptiness cut Ghost of the Sun and Teargas from Last Fair Deal Gone Down coming later. A healthy cut from their ground breaking The Great Cold Distance brought Leaders and Soil’s Song to the fray with My Twin and July being saved for the encore along with the soaring, beauty of Lethean where Roger Ojersson’s guitar solo took the song onto an altogether higher plane.

Forsaker encapsulates the Katatonia sound to perfection at times bleak and stark with bone crunchingly heavy riffs with dark, brooding melodies and the smooth, mellow vocals of Jonas Renkse combining to create an utterly unique and hauntingly beautiful experience. No one else sounds quite like Katatonia and this, the opening night on their UK tour was proof that they may well be just about the best band on the planet right now.

Katatonia

Author

Mick Burgess

Mick is a reviewer and photographer here at Metal Express Radio, based in the North-East of England. He first fell in love with music after hearing Jeff Wayne's spectacular The War of the Worlds in the cold winter of 1978. Then in the summer of '79 he discovered a copy of Kiss Alive II amongst his sister’s record collection, which literally blew him away! He then quickly found Van Halen I and Rainbow's Down To Earth, and he was well on the way to being rescued from Top 40 radio hell! Over the ensuing years, he's enjoyed the Classic Rock music of Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, and Deep Purple; the AOR of Journey and Foreigner; the Pomp of Styx and Kansas; the Progressive Metal of Dream Theater, Queensrÿche, and Symphony X; the Goth Metal of Nightwish, Within Temptation, and Epica, and a whole host of other great bands that are too numerous to mention. When he's not listening to music, he watches Sunderland lose more football (soccer) matches than they win, and occasionally, if he has to, he goes to work as a property lawyer.
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