Katatonia are no strangers to ups and downs. You could safely argue that it’s even what their music is about. But with one of the two remaining original members, Jonas Renkse, handling most of the writing for recent albums, you wouldn’t be alone in thinking that something was brewing in camp crow. Sure enough, the news that Anders Nyström, the other remaining original member, was leaving hardly came as a surprise. What did surprise me, however, is that a new album was on the horizon just a few months after this piece of news. In my review of Sky Void of Stars, I remarked that Katatonia seemed to hit their stride well with the poppier side of their material by attempting to channel the streamlined songwriting of Dead End Kings through the lens of albums like Viva Emptiness and The Great Cold Distance. Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State dives head first into this direction but instead reverses the formula: the dense and depressive metal of Viva Emptiness through Night is the New Day is now the foundation, while it is filtered through Dead End Kings‘ downcast sound. If someone had told me this leading up to the release of Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State, I would have been overjoyed as I feared that Jonas would decide to travel further down the road of a pop-leaning incarnation of the band. But you can’t predict the twists and turns that nightmares take when you think you’re safe.
Looking at Katatonia‘s work since Dead End Kings released in 2012 one finds a band that seem to be in search of a direction, only occasionally releasing some truly stellar material like on The Fall of Hearts. That album renewed hope that Katatonia were expanding their sound by trying to experiment with progressive song structures. But the results since then have been rather mixed, with most of Katatonia‘s eras floating together in a general kind of sound that is hard to define on successive works. All of these usual ingredients of later era-Katatonia are present on Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State. The synth backed lead guitar has a tragic bent that soars above Jonas Renkse‘s airy vocals. The tone of the rhythm guitar is a bit chunkier than it’s been in a while, looking back towards the 00’s alternative metal Katatonia-material, while the drums have a slightly jazzy bent that fills in the more sedate moments. When Nightmares… is at its best it has some clear ideas, like the grand sounding “Winds of no Change” that uses its bass heavy chanting refrain to slip between heavy metal and moody rock in a natural way, or the confident “Warden” that sounds like a modern, less desperate, take on the Last Fair Deal Gone Down sound. While most performers sound good both in performance and production, Daniel Moilanen‘s drums stand out to me. His performance is not something out of the ordinary in composition, but he brings a soft touch to sedate moments and controlled heft (as in “Thrice”) to busier moments with the odd creative flourish occasionally. Jonas sounds as confident as ever but sticks to his usual measured singing, only occasionally stretching into a more energetic delivery like he does in “Temporal” and “In the Event of”.
Energy is really the key word when it comes to Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State. When looking at all of its ingredients, it should please as a moody alternative metal album made by an experienced and more than competent band that has an individual sound. But something keeps it all from coming together in a compelling way. The pacing of individual tracks are fine enough but the album often looses momentum in its pacing with so many tracks going through the same motions (“Departure Trails”,”Efter Solen”). At times, it feels like only the drums keep the album alive. The opener “Thrice” has good ideas but struggles to deliver any kind of payoff apart from its hefty atmospheric moment and its initial wow-effect. Other songs follow suit, and at worst, numbers like “Lilac” and “The Light Which I Bleed” sound like stock Katatonia and offer few individual or new ideas. That a 46 minute album ends up being so sedate that I always zone out and loose track of it points to a work that is less than the sum of its admittedly good parts. The high points on Nightmares… are not so high that I would feel like I’m missing out on something if I don’t return to it, and it continues the string of Katatonia releases that feel interchangeable in their discography. While Sky Void of Stars convinced me that Jonas is capable enough to handle songwriting duties on his own while still working within the established Katatonia sound, Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State feels so tiredly dejected, so conforming to previous Katatonia material, that one can’t help worrying that the formula is getting too confining after all. This nightmare unfortunately puts me to sleep.
