Katatonia - Dead End Kings Review

Katatonia - Dead End Kings

Rating

RIYL

Paradise Lost
My Dying Bride
Anathema
Daylight Dies

Release Date

08/28/2012

Label

Peaceville

Tracklist

1. The Parting
2. The One Your Are Looking For is Not Here (with Silje Wergeland)
3. Hypnone
4. The Racing Heart
5. Buildings
6. Leech
7. Ambitions
8. Undo You
9. Lethean
10. First Prayer
11. Dead Letters

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Rick Gebhardt

I revealed in my The Foreshadowing review that Katatonia is basically my entrance and my exit to the doom genre. But I really have only listened to Night is the New Day, and now Dead End Kings. I’m not even an experienced enough partaker of the band Katatonia, let alone of the genre as a whole! What I’m saying is that I’m more underqualified than usual to write some sort of authoritative and informed review. So instead I thought instead of dealing with Dead End Kings on a musical (and professional) level, I’d weave some sort of visual metaphor to explain how good this album is.

I see Dead End Kings as less of a progression from Night is the New Day, and more of an extension; more like Katatonia lovingly hammering out the dings and dents on their old album and then buffered that shit to a mirror sheen. So, a logical starting point for our visual metaphor is the stone angel from Night is the New Day’s cover art, except a smaller copy of her, which represents Dead End Kings, is sort of jutting out of her midsection as though she’s reproducing asexually— like an angel-tumor. But, of course, this angel-tumor is flawless; not a crack on her surfaces, and she’s freshly glazed. Angel-tumor-swag. Following me? So that’s roughly what Dead End Kings sounds like.

Now, how good does it sound?

Keep that picture of the stone angel budding a shinier, hotter angel-tumor in your head, now imagine them both with tastefully-sized, vein-wrapped stone angel dicks, and, starting with “The Parting,” every time Katatonia pound out another glorious chorus that stuffs your ears like cream in a doom Twinkie, these two impressive stone angel dicks ejaculate a fine, viscous power of sentient stone angel semen that swirls in the wind and slowly forms the likeness of two doves carrying in their beaks olive branches and rosemary and frankincense. And this happens eleven separate times, which means we’re accumulating 22 soaring stone angel semen doves. And then, during that final build-up in “Dead Letters,” which ends the album on such a ridiculously high note—at that moment, all the spoogedoves violently collide, decimating the whole flock.

The explosion of spoogedovedust coats the clouds and skies like a nuclear winter, and the only precipitation is ashy, white flakes that carelessly drift downward from on high amongst the clouds, down, ever down, until they alight softly on your waiting, expectant tongue.

--Zach Roth

Author

Zach Roth

Last updated: 10/05/2012 07:43AM

Comments

Rick Gebhardt

10/05/2012

01:17PM

Age: 32

Location
Minnesota

Right now, this is sitting as my album of the year. Katatonia can simply do no wrong by me, especially when they're covering me in spoogedove residue from the sky.

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