Katatonia - The Fall Of Hearts

This is actually the album that got me into heavy metal, in a way. Some people I knew from high school started a (pretty bad) heavy metal band that opened for Katatonia when they came through Pittsburgh, so I went to go see them at Mr. Smalls. This is the album they were touring, but I didn’t find it until this past summer at Found Sound in Ferndale, MI. Katatonia are kind of like Opeth’s little brother band. They both started as a death metal band in Stockholm in the early 90s, added more clean vocals and non-metal influences into their sound in the 00s, and take flack from purists for being progressive rock bands in metal clothing. That’s probably a fairer criticism of Katatonia than of Opeth.

Still, I love progressive rock, and this is some damn good progressive rock. Jonas Renske sings sweetly and clean, which means the band can play as hard and as heavily as they want. The guitars do a lot of that hammer-on pull-off Mastodon thing. The four song run of “Sanction”-“Residual”-“Serac”-“Last Song Before the Fade” is particularly good, full of soaring choruses, smooth melodies, and gnarly guitar riffs. A more restrained band would have been able to cut the album at eight songs, but there’s another four songs after it. This album has continued to unfold new facets to me over the past eight years. It’s a very pretty package, and a good shallow end introduction to metal for someone who doesn’t mind long songs.

The Fall Of Hearts by Katatonia is a good album, and I like it.