It’s hard for me to believe that the band’s older fans couldn’t find it in their hearts to forgive Katatonia. They’ve been far away from their black metal roots for a long time, have reached personal best levels with Last Fair Deal Gone Down and The Great Cold Distance, and have done it again with their latest, Night Is the New Day. The word from the studio sessions was that this would be an extension of The Great Cold Distance — that the band was no longer going to worry about being slavishly loyal to their genre, but focused on delivering what they felt was their best work, and this latest offering delivers on that promise.

Guitarists Frederik Norrman and Anders Nystrom can still hit that hard, satisfying crunch when they need to, as on the opening assault “Forsaker,” yet that is something of a red herring. From folky acoustic passages in the unabashedly melodic “Idle Blood” to all manner of pedal manipulations, the album verges at times on art rock; at heart, it’s still “heavy,” but it’s more about using the arsenal when most effective instead of blasting all the guns at once. (more…)