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At this point, the masters of melancholy, KATATONIA have firmly woven themselves into metal’s rich tapestry, amassing a staggering 30 years plus career in the process. 2023’s Sky Void of Stars was considered one of their strongest works to date, with founding member Jonas Renkse continuing to be an unstoppable creative force. To further attest to that statement they are already gearing up to release the follow-up and thirteenth album, Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State.
Whilst, Jonas prefers to be particularly cryptic with regards to his lyrical themes, long-standing bassist Niklas Sandin did his best to shed some insight on how this effort came together. “It’s definitely a continuation of the KATATONIA legacy but maybe a bit more straightforward this time? It’s an album that was written with live performances in mind. There are lots of powerful tunes which sound quite hopeless and gloomy, if hope was ever a part of the KATATONIA sound! Jonas likes to keep the concept and thematics very much up to interpretation, even for everyone else in the band. He enjoys seeing the fans come up with their own meaning of what the songs represent. From my perspective it is a representation of the world in its present state and what may have been perceived as nightmares has become everyday life for people. The world seems to be surrounded in darkness at the moment, not just in a political sense.”
It came as quite a shock when the news broke about founding member Anders Nyström opting to depart the band alongside guitarist Roger Öjersson. One of the many useful opportunities that presents itself being part of an illustrious outfit such as KATATONIA is the contacts and people you meet along the way. This was also a perfect chance to inject some new blood into the band in the form of guitar duo Nico Elgstrand and Sebastian Svalland.
“Nico and Sebastian are terrific people. They’re very outward, friendly and encompassing,” explains Niklas. “They also have high energy, hunger, and bring new ideas from different angles which we haven’t really had before so we feel it has contributed to sparking a new energy into the band. Nico joined us on stage for the first time back in 2022 when we played Dark Mofo Festival in Tasmania, the first time I met him was when we started rehearsing for that show. That was a challenging experience as our flight got cancelled flying out of Stockholm. We arrived about six hours before our set and we had to scramble to get hold of instruments because ours got stuck in Frankfurt! It was quite an ordeal but it made us really tight spending that time together. He filled in for Anders on our European tour in 2023 too so he’s been part of the band for quite a while now. I think Jonas knew Sebastian previously as someone recommended him, after a few dinner dates he decided to join the band as it’s been great having him with us.”
Jonas has been the main orchestrator in KATATONIA for quite some time now, with Anders becoming less and less enthusiastic as time elapsed. He does however, encourage the other members to leave their respective stamp on their music. “Jonas isn’t the kind of person to sit at home, watching TV and letting the days pass him by. He’s continuously in that creative space. He’s always in his studio working on ideas and like any songwriter he probably scraps a lot of ideas before he settles on something he is really happy with. My trouble is I think of my best ideas after a few pints and then I forget about them the following day!” Jokes Niklas. “He will put down a quite finished demo in his home studio and either send it over to us or play it in person. He really likes to inspire us to make our own mark and come up with our own ideas. If we feel we can improve something he gladly listens to what we bring to the table. It’s never been a case of ‘you didn’t play that exactly like I wrote it’, he wants us to come up with our own flavour and ideas. For this record, I hardly did anything different apart from a few minor things as I felt the bass tracks served the songs really well and that is so much more important than your own ego. I’m not the kind of person to write something for the sake of it just so I can brag about it later.”
“It just meant I had to learn a lot of material that he had written. Some parts were particularly gnarly and in the past I’ve had difficulty nailing everything down perfectly or interpreting which note was being played in the arrangement. This time I got everything sent to me via MIDI files so I could see everything and punch my way through the riffs which made it so much easier for me to get my head around. I always get this anxiety that I’m going to go into the studio and everything is going to go horribly wrong, no matter how much time and practice I put in but this time was a terrific experience.”
Having a hefty back catalogue to utilise can be a blessing and a curse. Unfortunately, with limited set time at your disposal, even more so during festival season, it can be rather painstaking choosing the best tools for the task, especially when some tracks maybe be considered non-negotiable from a fan perspective. Niklas may have devised a cunning means of navigating this conundrum.
“It is becoming increasingly more difficult to curate a setlist nowadays because we have so many good songs, which isn’t a bad situation to be in I guess. Sometimes I wish we could just put our song titles down on the Wheel Of Fortune and just spin it a few times but we need to figure out what works well together, what works with the new songs as we want to promote the new album as much as possible. There is also a substantial part of the setlist which contains those ‘darlings’ which you can’t ever really leave out of the set. We left out My Twin at one point and it just felt really weird. It is also fun sitting and trying to figure things out and make sure we keep things fresh. It’s been nice to see Nico and Sebastian get excited to play certain songs too.”
“We just recently played Headbanger’s Balls festival in Belgium and they got to play Dead Letters which has a lot of guitar action going on. We’ve also been able to premiere Lilac and Drab Moon which were both awesome to see the reaction of the crowd even though Drab Moon is intensely hard to play, it’s all about timing as it ebbs and flows quite a lot. I remember playing the Sanctitude unplugged tour about ten years ago now and it was the most nerve-wracking tour I’ve ever done because you felt so vulnerable playing acoustically. We also played in a different tuning as well so it felt very different. It just felt so much more exposed.”
Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State is out now via Napalm Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS121 here:
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