Review by Daniel for Katatonia - Jhva Elohim Meth... the Revival (1993)

I believe Swedish doom/death duo Katatonia's earliest work was another one that I picked up from Neuropath vocalist Mark Wangmann during the very early stages of the band with me having borrowed Mark's CD copy of "Jhva Elohim Meth... the Revival" & ripping it for my own private listening. This likely would have been towards the back end of 1993 & I hadn't heard of Katatonia before. I recall finding the material to show a fair bit of promise although the performances were a little more primitive than I'd generally accept. I don't think I was aware of the fact that this release was only ever intended to be a demo until a couple of years later but there was definitely enough quality there to see me giving "Jhva Elohim Meth... the Revival" a few listens & returning to it on the odd occasion over the next couple of years too. I'd pick up a dubbed copy of Katatonia's debut album "Dance of December Souls" from the tape trading scene shortly afterwards & would find a similar level of enjoyment there, although it's fair to say that I never fully committed to Katatonia until I picked up their "For Funerals to Come..." E.P. on CD in 1995. Katatonia would go on to much bigger & brighter things after that & have released records that mean a lot to me over the years. It's been decades since I last heard their initial "Jhva Elohim Meth... the Revival" release though so I thought I'd see how it sounds a good half a lifetime later.

"Jhva Elohim Meth... the Revival" offers five tracks across a seventeen-minute run time with the two pieces that bookend the release being high quality folk & ambient intro/outro style numbers. I really enjoy these two tracks & feel that they actually feel a lot more professional than some of the metal tunes included here which has me wondering if they might have been produced from outside of the band but I can't see any evidence of it online so perhaps not. The three metal songs traverse a variety of quality levels & you can easily see Katatonia defining their sound from track to track. By far the most significant piece is the seven minute "Without God" which was re-recorded for the "Dance of December Souls" album shortly afterwards. Here we see guitarist/bassist Anders Nyström's (Bloodbath/Bewitched/Diabolical Masquerade) talent for creating wonderfully engaging guitar melodies & harmonies in full effect even though he was still only seventeen years of age at the time. This element would become Katatonia's calling card in the coming years but it's surprising just how well defined it already was on this early version of "Without God" & I think I actually prefer this more primitive version over the re-recorded one that can be found on the debut full-length. The other two proper songs are less significant with "Palace of Frost" failing to capture me & containing a few fairly cringy moments, particularly the drastically out of key melodic guitar section. "The Northern Silence" fairs much better & is a reasonably enjoyable (yet still pretty inessential) example of the early Katatonia sound. Renkse's drumming isn't the most accomplished you'll ever hear on this record & is arguably the weak point of the release with his timing leaving a little bit to be desired at times. Interestingly, legendary metal producer/musician Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity/Odyssey/Witherscape/Bloodbath/Infestdead/Karaboudjan/Pan.Thy.Monium/Ribspreader) contributes the keyboards & clean vocals on this record & is also responsible for the production job which is more than acceptable for a demo recording.

I don't believe I ever heard Katatonia's earlier rehearsal tapes, the first of which was reported to be a crude black metal affair. You can still easily hear the duo's black metal roots on "Jhva Elohim Meth... the Revival" too though, so much so that I'm tempted to label this E.P.'s sound as blackened doom/death as the black metal component seems to be significant enough to warrant it, particularly on "The Northern Silence". In fact, I'd probably go so far as to suggest that this release sounds like a combination of "Gothic"-period Paradise Lost & Rotting Christ's "Non serviam" sophomore album. The howled vocals of front man Jonas Renkse (later of Bloodbath & October Tide) definitely possess blackened elements while there are a number of genuine tremolo-picked black metal riffs included too. It's the doomier & more melodic parts of the E.P. that are the most engaging part of the release though & I'm not surprised that Katatonia ended up committing to that sound moving forwards.

To be open & transparent, I've never rated the "Dance of December Souls" album as highly as most doom/death fans seem to. I certainly find it to be pretty enjoyable but it's never seemed like anything particularly remarkable to me either & I actually don't see it as a noticeable step up from in quality from "Jhva Elohim Meth... the Revival". In fact, on the evidence of this revisit I'm going to suggest that I might even favour the E.P. just slightly over the debut album which I know will probably surprise a few people but neither record can compete with Katatonia's later material as far as I'm concerned. That's not to say that "Jhva Elohim Meth... the Revival" isn't worth a few listens for fans of the genre though because it certainly is. I'd just suggest keeping a little bit of perspective when going about it.

For fans of "Gothic"-era Paradise Lost, early Anathema & Rotting Christ's "Non serviam" album.