Review by Sonny for October Tide - Rain Without End (1997)

Without wishing to sound too contentious, I've got to confess to being underwhelmed by October Tide's brand of melodic death doom. Despite believing that Katatonia are not wholly deserving of the amount of adulation that gets heaped upon them, I have to admit that Brave Murder Day is a great record, in my opinion massively aided by the presence of Mikael Akerfeldt's vocals. But this, which is to all intents and purposes the follow up to that record as it was recorded by the majority of Katatonia's BMD lineup, is a bit of a damp squib to my ears. It's a highly polished and melodic album sure enough, but I far prefer death doom with a more sulphurous and fetid atmosphere, a sound that feels lived in and more organic. I don't feel the growled vocals add anything to the sound and in a couple of cases I think the tracks would be far more effective with clean vocals (All Painted Gold for example). The keyboards are lacklustre, seemingly interrupting a track for no discernible reason (the mid-section of Infinite Submission sounds like an ambient bridging track from a second-rate bedroom black metal outfit and interrupts the song just when it's got going). Like BMD this too has a gothic, synthpop track, Losing Tomorrow, that sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the material on the album as if the band felt we needed a respite for some reason.
Sure, it's not a terrible record by any means and maybe I'm being a bit harsh in some kind of unjustifiably knee-jerk way, but even after revisiting the album for the clan challenge I still stick by my original opinion that this is an overrated release.