Katatonia - Sounds of Decay (1997)^{Release ID: 894}

A nice little farewell to the death doom metal form of Katatonia and essential for Brave Murder Day fans.

The Sounds of Decay EP was a Katatonia release that eluded me for many years. While it can now be found in its entirety easily enough on the 2004 Brave Yester Days Compilation, or on the Peaceville re-release of Brave Murder Day as bonus tracks (not to mention be downloaded at the click of a button), I was at one stage left to scour the likes of EBay to try and get my hands on it. Given my love of Brave Murder Day, and the fact that Sounds of Decay is the only other recording that features the same Katatonia line-up, this was one release that I was very keen to track down. While I thoroughly enjoy the softer depressive rock direction these Swedes chose to take from this point onwards, I’ve always been a sucker for death doom metal, and Brave Murder Day is one of the highlights of the genre, not to mention one of my favourite albums of any style. Its hypnotic and despondent melodies move me immeasurably, so the idea of more of the same seemed like a perfectly good proposition to me. That’s exactly what you get with Sounds of Decay, so the day I unwrapped my precious digipak copy, sent from some obscure international location and for which I paid an exorbitant amount of cash for, was an exciting one indeed. Can’t say I’ve ever regretted the purchase either!

Speaking of the digipak, it seems to be the only official version that was released, although there are a few slipcase editions floating around the internet. It’s suitably gloomy cover displays a grainy still from an underground film titled Begotten. Having not seen the film, I can’t judge its quality, but IMDB’s plot summary mentions God disembowelling himself with a straight razor, the spirit-like Mother Earth emerging into a bleak and barren landscape, and the Son of Earth being set upon by faceless cannibals. One can only assume that this experimental art-house film gave the members of Katatonia some particularly depressing inspiration to work with, or perhaps they just thought the tainted image of a decrepit God was cool. While I may never know the answer to that question, I can answer whether Sounds of Decay contains music as great as can be found on Brave Murder Day. The answer is probably best summed up as “almost”, but you won’t hear any complaints from me regardless. It would be a couple more years until Finnish band Rapture would clone this sound (very effectively I might add), so these three tracks helped me through the harsh withdrawal symptoms nicely. I always assumed that this material was just unused recordings from the Brave Murder Day sessions, but the official Katatonia website put that theory to rest.

After a successful debut tour of Europe in the autumn of 1996, the band was raring to get back in the studio to record something new. Unfortunately, Dan Swanö’s Unisound Studio, which they’d used for all previous releases, had closed its doors for good, so they’d have to find a new home. The most logical alternative was Sunlight Studio, which also happened to be located in their home city of Stockholm. Knowing this information, it’s surprising just how much Sounds of Decay sounds like Brave Murder Day and apart from a couple of dodgy lead sections, these 18 minutes of blissful hopelessness contain all the qualities that worked so well on that album. Opener Nowhere is probably the highlight, but all three have enough to offer to make this EP well worth hunting down in whatever format you can get your hands on. Apparently, there was a fourth track called Untrue recorded during this session but left off Sounds of Decay for unknown reasons. It does appear on the Brave Yester Days compilation though and I can't help thinking it would have been a great finish to this release and would have given it just a little bit more substance. Still, as a farewell to the death doom styled Katatonia, Sounds of Decay is a fitting goodbye and should hold its place in any fan's collection.

This EP has been released as bonus tracks on later versions of Brave Murder Day and if you were unaware that they were originally released separately then you would almost certainly think they were part of the original album, being virtually the same in style and execution. Luckily, this is a very good thing and is consequently the band's last great hurrah.