Katatonia: Discouraged Ones [PEACEVILLE]

Why you'll love it

This Peaceville reissue is remastered by David Castillo, pressed in Germany and packed with a printed inner sleeve. It's the album where Jonas Renkse's clean, aching voice took the lead, with Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt producing the vocals.

This edition

• Remastered
• Printed inner sleeve
• Pressed in Germany

About the album

Plenty of bands get heavier as they go along. Katatonia went the other way. By 1998 the Stockholm group had made their name in the murky depths of doom and death metal, and on Discouraged Ones they pared the extremity back, leaned on melody and let the atmosphere do the heavy lifting. The result is a record that still sounds like grey skies over the Baltic, in the best possible way.

Renkse handled the drums as well as the singing, the last time he'd sit behind the kit on a Katatonia album, while Anders Nyström and Fred Norrman wove their guitar lines around him and Micke Oretoft held down the bass. Åkerfeldt also sang backing parts, and Tomas Skogsberg engineered and mixed. "Deadhouse," "Gone" and "Saw You Drown" set the template: slow-burning riffs, minor-key hooks and a voice that sounds like it's watching the rain from a long way off.

That change in direction paved the way for Tonight's Decision, Last Fair Deal Gone Down and the long run of melancholy records that followed. It also makes an ideal soundtrack for a Toronto November, which we have in generous supply.

Also at Kops: more Katatonia on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Peaceville (cat# VILELP1144), a reissue of the 1998 album.