Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Coffin Shaker: Katatonia, The Great Cold Distance






If there has been one album that has to this point defined my 2017, it would be Katatonia’s The Great Cold Distance. Another one of those albums that I heard long, long ago and mostly brushed off, something with this album clicked for me early in the year, and has not left me since. Katatonia began life as a doomy Death metal outfit from Sweden, the band morphed over time to a more moody, depressive rock, Gothic metal group, where they’ve done largely excellent work since. 2006 brought this album. I heard it back then and really liked a few of the songs, “My Twin” being the one that I truly remember, but ultimately panned the rest of the album without giving it too much thought.

Years later, in a fairly sullen mood, the wheel of my iPod stopped first on Katatonia, and then on this album. What happened next was really nothing short of magic.


The Great Cold Distance is apparently the album the band plays songs from most live, and it’s not hard to understand why. The more difficult question would be why the band doesn’t just play songs from this album. That is not to say that this is the pinnacle of the Katatonia catalog, as this listener is always going to be most partial to Tonight’s Decision, but The Great Cold Distance is a start to finish experience, with its weaker tracks essentially being guilty of not being the stronger ones. Part of the bands’ move away from their doomy death metal sound to the signature depressive rock style, the album works terrifically as a whole listening experience, each song worthy of continuous and repeated listens.

If the record has any serious issues, it would be that some parts of it have difficulty separating themselves from the real gold. The second half of the album does get a little bit indistinguishable, as songs, while good on their own, do tend to muddy together a bit. While I can name the first five tracks in order, after “Consternation,” the only other track name I can recall is the ninth and most outstanding one, “July.” The albums’ first half is the opposite, with each track being distinctive and unique, with the exception of “Soil’s Song,” the one that ends up being kind of meh. So basically, the problem is that, while all the songs are good and fit the overall flow and personality of the album, they aren’t all “July” or “Deliberation”. The aforementioned “Soil’s Song” being probably the best and most obvious example of this: if there were one skippable track on the album, it would be “Soil’s Song,” whose major shortcoming is that it is neither “Deliberation” nor “My Twin,” the songs that surround it.

The songs in general have some good moments lyrically as well, although taken out of their musical context, they are a bit teenaged emo poetry. To be expected for the genre, really. Songs of love lost and life being lost, there are some real clever moments and lines that will get stuck in the ear, occasionally providing those lyrical gems that are so simple, yet speak a volume to the listener. At times, I’ll catch lyrics from the album drifting through my head and have this alternating response to them: occasionally brilliant, occasionally cringe-worthy. But, again, it’s doomy, depressive metal, and pretty much all songs of any genre that work for that sullen vibe are embarrassing and lame, so this isn’t a thing that can be held against this set of tracks. Musically, everything is melodic yet punchy, nothing veering too hard into softer territories that it doesn’t still have some rock to it, with some really good riffs and melodies.

There is a terrific overall melancholy to this record, from first to last note, which is the basic Katatonia oeuvre, so it should be expected. But The Great Cold Distance lays it on thick, and never relents. It is the sound of those random, cool summer nights, or that spectral chill in the air once August comes, reminding us that Fall is imminent, with earlier dark and the existential knowledge that, as seasons go, Fall is the beginning of the death of another year, following Summer’s vibrant life. It is the sound of looking out your window in late December when the street is empty of cars because everyone’s gone home for the holidays, and you realize that, even though it has been dark for a while and all the streetlights are on, it’s only 6.30pm. I hate it when music reviews get like this and start using these allusions and stuff, but music does transport us to other times or places, and this album certainly does it for me. No mean feat, I’d say, as the retreat of Summer has begun, and so I am tweaking my iPod roster to contain more frigid Black metal for the coming cooler times, and The Great Cold Distance is currently the, I underline “the” for emphasis, record that evokes the general atmosphere that I’m seeking by doing so.

Personally, it’s been a strange year, with a lot of bizarre and difficult feelings spurred by matters both worldly and metaphysical, and for much of it, there hasn’t been any place to go with them. So it ends up being records like The Great Cold Distance that offer the most comfortable solace, not a way through those woods, but a comforting sense of it being ok that everything sucks. Passed over years ago, that February morning when I at random gave the record another try could end up being the most important accidental decision of my year. 

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