Katatonia's finest moment. Hypnotic, emotional and beautiful
Ben Stubbs | Australia | 02/25/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is it. It's Katatonia's finest moment in what is a fantastic musical career. I think it's the album where they really found their perfect sound and clicked as a band. Everything the band released previously, while very good, had moments of awkwardness and imperfection. Everything they've released since, while fairly incomparable due to its difference in style (the "Sounds of Decay" EP excluded) simply cannot match this album for emotional depth and exquisite beauty.
Every time I put "Brave Murder Day" on it captivates me. The band utilizes minor keys consistently to grasp at my emotions and beautiful harmonies that make me feel like weeping with happiness. They use hypnotic repetitious themes to get under my skin, and then various interludes and slight changeups to hold me in a state of trance-like rapture.
Blackheim and Fredrik's guitar work is absolutely awesome. Their mid paced riffing and lead work is what makes "Brave Murder Day" work so astoundingly well. They manage to create an extremely dark and desperate mood, without ever plodding into boredom territory. Borrowing Mikael Akerfeldt from Opeth for vocal duties, whom I consider to be one of metal's best vocalists, only adds to the brilliance with his tortured guttural outbursts taking their previous sound to a totally new level. Jonas' drumming deserves mention also. While he never reaches high levels of technicality, he proves that less is more when it comes to death / doom metal, adding minor double bass sections and cymbal variances regularly, yet at all the right times to be effective.
If you have even the slightest tendencies towards doomy death metal, then "Brave Murder Day" is a completely essential album, sitting at the very top of the genre alongside My Dying Bride and Saturnus. It also stands as one of my very favourite albums of any genre...ever! Future Katatonia albums would travel a different path (one less aggressive, yet still filled with loss and despair), which I can only see as a fairly decent decision, as it would be futile to even attempt to make a better album in this style than "Brave Murder Day".
Note : When "Brave Murder Day" was originally released, it surprisingly had not been mastered at all. It has finally been mastered for this 2006 digipak version and while it's not hugely different sounding, the result is a positive one. As a bonus, it also contains the three tracks off the "Sounds of Decay" EP. It's suitable to find these tracks alongside "Brave Murder Day" as they contain a very similar sound and also include Mikael Akerfeldt on vocals. If you don't own either of these releases, then I suggest you snap this up immediately. If you own "Brave Murder Day" already but not "Sounds of Decay", then I suggest getting the "Brave Yester Days" compilation instead which contains all three tracks plus a whole bunch more."
Track Listings (9) - Disc #1