Katatonia To Tour A “Sky Void Of Stars” In Australia Next Month

Swedish ethereal post-metal heavyweights KATATONIA return to Australia for their first headline tour in nearly a decade, solemnly set the stage for a nocturne both crushing and exhilarating. Led by founding members Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström have always been and will forevermore be one thing – a vessel of deep emotion; shrouded in Scandinavian despair and a universal longing for salvation.

Over the course of an unbelievable thirty years and eleven studio albums, Katatonia have never shied away from evolution. They have embraced the concept of growing through rejuvenation to soothe their blackened hearts and scarred souls. At the very core of this entity, there still lingers the essence of their remarkable passage through time and space. Their music is pure and heartfelt from the northern wilderness; cast in mournful dirges for a world that needs renaissance. Hi Fi Way speaks with bassist Niklas Sandin about the tour.

Katatonia’s Australian tour starts next month, you must be looking forward to it? Definitely feels like it’s been far too long.
Oh yeah, definitely. It’s been way overdue, so it’s nice to finally come back and experience some nice sunshine as well as I believe hat it will be summer there.

What do you like about touring Australia?
Mainly the hospitality and the great people. That’s what I’m looking forward to the most, to be honest. It’s always good to be there, you know.

How’s the tour going so far particularly with a new album under your belt now?
Oh yeah. It’s great. It’s an album that I’m very proud of and being part of. I think it came out really, really good. So, it’s exciting to play songs from that album and we managed to squeeze in a few songs from that album already last year when we were doing the US tour for City Burials, where we gave a few hints and started playing the signals for the album. It’s good now that we can put more focus and put more weight towards Sky Void of Stars.

Have you been happy with the comments from fans on social media about the album?
Definitely, I think it’s been predominantly good feedback and people have been really happy with the album and have embraced it. Then there’s always those who are a little bit more, you know, towards the back catalogue of the band and are a little bit more hesitant. They may have to get through those initial few years to let it sink in properly. It can be like that for me as well when I listen to newer music. People have been very positive about the new album and you can see it as well when we are out playing shows that they know the music, they sing along with the lyrics. Even the week after the release of Sky Void Of Stars you could see people are already singing the lyrics in the audience. So that’s pretty cool.

Do you think by the time you get to Australia you’ll probably be playing more from Sky Void of Stars?
I think we’re going to probably change it up a little bit and put more songs from the new album in and introduce more of that album. The trade-off might be that we may not play some songs from the album that we’ve already played live, but you never know. We really like to be able to change it up once in a while, so it keeps us on our toes as well. We’re definitely at the stage now where we’re going to change up the set list a little bit just to keep it fresh for the audience and for ourselves because after a while it becomes a little bit boring to play the same songs all over again.

The energy and intensity of the recording is what makes Sky Void of Stars? Was it great being back in the studio together after the restrictions of the last couple of years?
Yeah, I know lots of people who got hit by Covid harder than we did. We really felt sad about not being able to give City Burials what it deserved by not being able to tour it properly. So, we sat down in our rehearsal headquarters, spent lot of time down there hanging out and wished for a brighter future in terms of being able to go out and play. I think that kind of welded us together even more as a group to make something even better.

Even though we were recording everything individually, we were doing the layer recording where the drums goes first, which was done in Jacob Hansen’s studio in Denmark. Then we, we put all the guitars and bass tracks afterwards in Stockholm as well as the vocals and all the ambient backgrounds. I think it has a vibe and an energy that really conveys that we wanted to go back on the road and be back as a band more than ever, in my opinion.

Working on this album, would this be the most satisfied you have been musically in a long while?
I think so, we were anticipating what comes next because before in the past everything goes in cycles and everything just goes as planned like with a hamster wheel, but now we didn’t really know what to expect and what the future would hold, but we knew that we wanted to do an album and release more music. We were even dreaming of standing in the check-in queues at the airport, something that we dreaded back in the day, standing for hours in the check in queue with lots of instrument and getting sweaty, maybe experiencing a little bit of a hangover meanwhile doing it. Then at the rehearsal place when we were in the midst of the Covid and we were actually dreaming about doing just those kind of things. I think that we as a band also recognise that now and everything is back and working as it did back in the day, that we’re not taking everything for granted as we did back in the day especially when you haven’t experienced a full lock down and how it would be with all the restrictions. So, it’s something that has kind of shaped and built us into another kind of band nowadays, which is a positive that a silver lining from the pandemic.

How do you compare City Burials with Sky Void Of Stars?
I think it still follows a red light in terms of what this Katatonia sound is, but it’s somewhat progressive and somewhat bleak and somewhat melancholic. I think for me, Sky Void of Stars is a more dead on album, but it’s more song driven and more direct than City Burials was. I think it’s more of an album which comprises a greater collection of songs that can be conveyed live in a good manner. So, I think it’s a more live album if you would call it that.

It might still be early days, but do you have ideas for the next album?
Oh, that’s a little bit early, but I think it’s just something that comes natural. It’s not something that the band or that the main songwriter Jonas is actively thinking about the next album. It’s a set goal and then he works around that, but it’s more of what comes natural for him and which kind of songs that comes out. I think that has been the main recipe for the success with all the albums that Katatonia has released, that it’s not something that’s planned or we have some kind of concept of that this is going to be the album and, and now we’re going to write these kind of songs and then work around that. It’s all about what comes natural and what flows out of his hands and mind when he writes music. No one really knows at this point what the next album will sound like, which is also the great, inspiring and exciting thing as a member as well that, that you don’t really know what you’re going to be working towards next time.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Katatonia on the following dates, tickets from DRW Entertainment / Metropolis Touring…