ALBUM REVIEW: Sky Void Of Stars – Katatonia

KATATONIA have quietly, but surely, become one of the most consistently brilliant bands pedalling all things doom and gloom. Across 11 studio albums they have shown a penchant for brooding, morose song-writing that owes as much to prog as it does to doom, as well as a healthy dose of gothic rock. Now onto their twelfth album, Sky Void Of Stars, KATATONIA are picking up where 2020’s City Burials left off in its more straightforward (by their standards) song-writing to craft a show-stopping opus. 

Opener Austerity is chock-full of hooks but not without its complexity, particularly in the verses where the drumming’s phrasing seems a little longer than the riff, causing the two to come back together later than you’d expect. The chorus, however, is pure melancholia with earworm melodies. It’s a bold ploy as an opener, especially with far more “accessible” songs hidden throughout, but the pacing never feels off and as an opening gambit it certainly pays off. With the following Colossal Shards and Opaline, they craft that love of weirder, more off-piste song-writing into solid gold. The former ratchets up the tension, while Opaline is an immaculate payoff that starts with poppy keys and erupts into gothic magnificence. 

None of this would’ve been possible in their earlier days; while they started as a far more straightforward death-doom band in the vein of early PARADISE LOST, Jonas Renkse’s well-documented love of the weird and wonderful world of prog and writing far less obvious, but no less hooky, songs played off against their more typical tendencies beautifully. That tension and control gave them the latitude to expand in a myriad of new directions, without fans abandoning them en masse, and now the death metal is practically all but gone. 

That’s no bad thing, either; with Renkse taking over lead song-writing duties, it means all the weird and wonderful gets to come out. That means melodies erupt out of strange places, guitars twist and turn, or the band just write bangers that are practically hard rock. Take Birds, the closest they get to a pop rock song, or Atrium, whose chorus has all the grandeur of 80s goth rock capped off by Renkse’s morose melodies. Something that Sky Void Of Stars isn’t void of is memorability; the inventive arrangements that underpin Birds’ chorus, the almost upbeat nature of Atrium with a simplistic, grandiose melody, all the way to closer No Beacon To Light Our Fall’s eight minutes of blues-tinged prog. 

Simply put, KATATONIA encapsulate all the best parts of gloomy, melancholic metal; sprawling prog that pulls back into much snappier arrangements, gorgeous washes of strings or synths that blossom under spacious guitar lines, refrains that’ll stick in your head for days, if not weeks. It’s all here, and impeccably written and performed. Sky Void Of Stars is utterly spellbinding from start to finish, full of lush composition, opulent melodicism and refined song-writing that cuts every ounce of dead weight. KATATONIA once more deliver exquisite, irresistible melancholia. 

Rating: 9/10

Sky Void Of Stars is set for release on January 20th via Napalm Records.

Like KATAONIA on Facebook.