As I said on the "Dance of December Souls" album review, the first Katatonia album I listened to was "Last Fair Deal Gone Down". When my CD of their second album, "Brave Murder Day", came in the mail, I was excited to listen to it, if only because of the guest death vocalist being none other than Mikael Akerfeldt from Opeth. Akerfeldt (or, at least, Akerfeldt in his prime) would be one of my favorite death vocalists along with fellow Swede and mega-producer/multi-instrumentalist Dan Swano, as heard on most work by his former band Edge of Sanity. Anyway, the first listen of "Brave Murder Day" went over my head. I don't know why; maybe I was expecting Opeth. However, as soon as the second listen, one by one these six songs drew me in until today when I find this album as one of my favorites of all-time.
While it's hard to call this anything but melodic death/doom or Gothic metal, this is a very different brand of this genre compared to Katatonia's previous album, "Dance of December Souls". While the melodies and rhythm parts on "Dance of..." were slow, brooding, and somewhat complex, the melodies and rhythm parts on "Brave Murder Day", you will notice, are very, very simple and somewhat more up-tempo. However, this doesn't have to be brooding to have that same bleak, melancholy mood that is Katatonia's signature. This is pretty dark music. One lyric in the first track, "Brave", is "The sound of falling"; that pretty much sums up the whole album. This entire album gives you a sense of falling endlessly. I'll even note that a line on the back of the booklet in the CD case reads "life is pain". Through this music, you can really feel this point of view on life. You can really feel the emotion and the emotional pain that Jonas Renkse and Anders "Blackheim" Nystrom - whether they are actually severely depressed people or not - wanted to get across here. This stuff, despite its musical simplicity, is that powerful.
TRACK-BY-TRACK FOLLOWS
You can tell how different "Brave Murder Day" is from "Dance of December Souls" when the album kicks off with "Brave", which starts with an 8th note harmonized "power chord" progression. The beat is very simple as well; the beats will be simple throughout the album. At about 1:50, a lead melody begins. This lead, too, is simply played (although I, for one, would not be able to write it). What you don't know at this point is that this melodic lead is about to transition into the most chill-inducing three minutes on the whole album, and in Katatonia's whole career. 3 minutes in, Blackheim starts a simple tapped melody, and... just keeps doing it. Over and over. He doesn't stop this tapped melody for about three minutes. After a few measures of this melody over feedback, Mikael comes in with a roar along with the steady rhythm guitar and perhaps the most simple 4/4 beat ever. It's then that Mikael roars: "The sound of falling/Where the pictures are moving/Between the memories". This is it. It may seem weird to milk this, but this is the sound of falling. This is despair in music. At 5:20, Blackheim finally stops tapping, and my chills start to subside a bit, only before a clean guitar plays another very simple lead to renew my chills. The clean guitar is joined by the rest of the band. Mikael holds out a chilling scream of the last word of "Wherever you are/I am NOT", before the song goes back to the first harmonized power chord progression, and then the lead that once led to the tapping part, now leading to the end. This, the longest on the album, is an incredibly powerful opening song, one that easily holds my attention for the entire 10:17. 10/10
"Murder" begins with one chord played repeatedly until the band joins in. This is somewhat fast, actually; a contrast from most anything off "Dance of December Souls". Once Mike's vocals come in, the song gets more doomy until beginning a transition with an eerie clean part at 2:10. A strange lead comes in for a verse before the intro basically repeats, starting with the one repeated chord and going into another power chord progression that invokes feelings of falling. This song is musically simple as well, but this doesn't hold back the power of the melodies at all. 9.5/10
After "Murder", sure enough, is "Day." The vocals are cleanly sung and the instruments are effectsy on this song, and one beat keeps throughout. It's hard to call this song anything but just sad and dark. This is the one track on which Jonas handles the majority of the vocals, as he would in future Katatonia releases, and his vocals are haunting as they are great in their context. The chorus in this song - "Let's stay here for a while" - is very memorable, and, like much Katatonia, the song brings you into this dark place that, really, you're supposed to go to when you listen through "Brave Murder Day". 9.5/10
After "Day" might be my all-time favorite Katatonia song: "Rainroom". The song starts heavy, with harmonized guitars and a very simple beat in the back of Mikael growling: "We saw it all pass by and you went by and I can't control anything/When you said that life can't be what you want and I really want everything". At about a minute in, the song uses a harmony a few times, to transition to the next part: one of the most beautiful and haunting harmonies I have ever heard. One lead starts at 1:44, and is joined by a harmony lead after two phrases, all over just an open E power chord played in 8th notes. What I will say about this part is that it gives me chills every time I hear it. As if this harmony weren't enough, Mikael unleashes dynamic, raspy screams followed by usual growled lines "I SAW IT END long before it ended/LIFE ITSELF turned pale and ended/I SAW YOU CRY out acres of your image/LIFE ITSELF does not heal me". This may be the most powerful moment on the album, if not the tapping part in "Brave". Shortly after, "Rainroom" transitions into a lone clean guitar, before the band joins the clean guitar, and Jonas is given his first singing-time on a mostly-Mikael song: "Like a slow scenery I'm losing all my faith/In lifeless motion you're walking like you're dead". At 4:38, the song breaks into one of Katatonia's all-time doomiest harmonies before coming back to the same as the intro: "We saw it all pass by..." until Mikael holds out the last "EVERYTHING" in a scream, and the drums break into a simple 16th-note double-bass beat. The song then fades out. Strange to say, but I think the name of this track really fits; close your eyes while listening, and you might as well be in a room by yourself, watching a storm of rain around you. That's the kind of atmosphere that Katatonia were capable of creating at the time of "Brave Murder Day". 10/10
Following "Rainroom" is "12". The song opens with a doomy harmony which progresses until pausing for a clean part that transitions into a simple doomy riff. At 2:17, the song breaks for a clean part, containing an absolutely beautiful clean lead line. The song then bridges into a heavy part with a double-bass beat, followed by another nice harmony. Again, the parts are simple, but are more than effective in conveying the atmosphere of the song and album. 5:32 in, the clean part returns, strangely without the nice lead, but its' effective nonetheless. After another transition, a very haunting, memorable harmony enters, joined by the band and Mikael growling: "I cannot breathe/I am losing life/The moon paints the skyline blue/She died so beautiful". This is one little part of the album I think could have been done better, maybe if Mikael had screamed or otherwise emphasized these last lines, but this is still a chill-inducing closing to the song. 9.75/10
Closing "Brave Murder Day" is the appropriately titled "Endtime". It starts with a very bleak clean intro, which is joined momentarily by the band, before the band breaks for the clean guitar to play out one of the downright saddest-sounding patterns I've ever heard. Surprising in this song is the use of samples, in this case two lines that are apparently from the movie The Shining. The clean guitar then stops for a simple yet haunting lead line which is again joined by the band. Clean vocals are again featured about halfway in. The "sad" clean part comes back, though faster, before the song goes back to distortion, and starts to come to a close with a double-bass beat and growing feedback from the guitars. This is a very strong closer to this album, with haunting melodies. 9.25/10
END TRACK-BY-TRACK
"Brave Murder Day" abounds with memorable, haunting, chilling melodies and harmonies. The musicianship is not virtuosic, but everything works beautifully in context. Mikael Akerfeldt feels right at home in these songs, yet they don't sound much like Opeth. The lyrics are powerful and moving, as is the music throughout this entire album. This is the music of despair. This is the soundtrack to a dark, dark life. This is the sound of falling. With this album, we can peer inside the versions of the hearts of the artists that they want us to see, and can only hope that they are generally happy people outside of their music careers. Whether I'm in a down mood or not, I can listen to "Brave Murder Day" and love every second of it. I may have given out my only 11/10 that I can ever give out, but "Brave Murder Day" was one of three candidates for such, along with Megadeth's "Rust in Peace" and Death's "The Sound of Perseverance". This album took two listens to grow enough on me to even hint at how much more it would grow on me, and has been in regular full-album listening rotation since. Despite that this is my favorite Katatonia album and one of my favorite albums of all time, I'm still happy that Katatonia evolved from this style, as I feel they reached the pinnacle of this style with "Brave Murder Day". 10/10
TL;DR:
Rating: 10/10
Highlights: Brave, Rainroom
Recommend: Buy if you can stand death vocals at all (nothing against such vocals, just I know some people can't)
