Great Cold Distance, The - Katatonia

Advantages: A masterpiece, quite simply
Disadvantages: Not catchy but worth persisting with

...a lot of early Fields of the Nephilim. The album was remastered in December 2006 and is the version you will now find in record stores. The full tracklisting is: 1. I Break 2. Stalemate 3. Deadhouse 4. Relention 5. Cold Ways 6. Gone 7. Last Resort 8. Nerve 9. Saw You Drown 10. Instrumental 11. Distrust Bonus tracks: 1. Quiet World 2. Scarlet Heavens This is one of those albums that you continue to think about and want to explore further only just after having finished listening to it, and if you're a fan of this sort of music and haven't heard Katatonia's work before, this album is as good a place as any to start.... Read review

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Advantages: Great album in its genre
Disadvantages: Not immediately accessible for some- but well worth persevering with

...Katatonia are a Swedish rock band who, like many of their contemporaries, evolved from death metal through to increasingly melodic and accessible rock music. Today, their music is catchy, even poppy, and this is exhibited particularly well on their "Great Cold Distance" album released earlier this year. However, this album, "Brave Murder Day", is from their earlier incarnation. Dense, gloomy, and powerfully atmospheric, this is one of the top albums of its genre, and I feel compelled to tell you why... As the sleeve notes (written by band member Anders Nystrom) point out, it's not often that an album's title is comprised on the first three songs on the album itself. It's also not often that an album as diverse and groundbreaking as Brave Murder Day emerges. When it was originally recorded back in 1996, it was the album that first... Read review

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Advantages: An unusual, often maginficent exploration of the traditional and experimental
Disadvantages: Occasionally too virtuoso

...nothing experimental or different as previous tracks have that’s no bad thing at all; it’s simple and to the point, a fitting ending to the experimentation that comes before it because it returns us to the traditional, to the source of the music we’ve heard. A final coda, a hidden track, assumedly Wu Man half-singing, half-humming with no accompaniment of any kind and strangely beautiful, if only for a minute. Understandably this is not music everyone will enjoy though possibly with its mixture of the traditional and the experimental, and the way Wu Man and her fellow musicians manage to tread the fine line between both to create their own sound and music, more might than first expected, because there is a great deal to enjoy within the music, as it travels vast distances and straddles so many different styles and explores so many... Read review

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