Style: alternative rock, progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Anathema, Soen, Opeth, Porcupine Tree
Country: Sweden
Release date: 6 June 2025

Few metal bands have a body of work and influence quite like Katatonia. Over more than thirty years, the group has released thirteen studio albums and spawned about a thousand bands inspired by the moody, alternative brand of metal they’re renowned for. At the Subway, Katatonia is one of the bands most often listed in the “for fans of” section of our reviews, their name alone exuding a distinct type of dark melodicism. And say what you will about any individual release, but the band’s discography is legendary—moving from death/doom to gothic to varying shades of prog-tinged alternative with a nearly unmatched level of finesse and consistency.

Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State comes months after a somewhat messy split with guitarist and co-founder Anders Nyström. Still, vocalist and co-founder Jonas Renkse wrote the band’s last two albums on his own and has done so again here, setting this one up to be business as usual. Some may bemoan this: following 2016’s phenomenal The Fall of Hearts, Katatonia’s past two albums were received largely as competent but not particularly inspired. And Renkse himself recently expressed some discontent with being the group’s sole songwriter, lamenting that it’s “sometimes very lonely; I would love the bouncing back and forth of ideas.” But any new Katatonia release is a welcome occasion, offering another opportunity to get lost in the somber and austere—yet strikingly lush—atmosphere the band has mastered. With Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State, does Renkse find inspiration in isolation?

True to form, Nightmares holds plenty of engrossing synth textures, a groovy undercurrent of slightly off-kilter rhythms, and the gracefully restrained but emotive vocal performance we’ve come to expect of Renkse. Opener “Thrice” showcases Katatonia’s signature qualities at their most compelling, fitting a winding composition into a dynamic four and a half minutes that builds momentum and keeps intrigue throughout. Being perhaps the heaviest and most progressive song on the record, “Thrice” kicks things off on a bold note before the album settles into a sustained, more subdued flow. To be sure, the album’s intensity swells on occasion along the way. The brooding “Winds of no Change” features big, choral chants not previously as potent in the band’s music, and “The Light Which I Bleed” boasts a massive, strings-laden outro that plays on an earlier motif—it stands as the album’s high-water mark, though it fades out far too quickly. These aren’t the only energetic passages—the ripping solo in “Temporal” warrants a shout—but for the most part, Nightmares is gloomy and relatively lethargic.

Gloom and lethargy aren’t exactly negative descriptors when it comes to Katatonia, each playing an important part in the band’s sound. “Lilac” wields them beautifully, especially in the heavenly couple of minutes that close the track, where floating synths and haunting vocals accent a passage gently pushed forward by poignant guitars and restrained yet intricate drumming. However, the rest of Nightmares isn’t as successful in this vein; its tracks generally plod along without much variety or conviction. “Efter Solen” (“After the Sun”) at least offers something new, an understated cut sung in Swedish and grounded in soft electronica, but it’s notable more for these features than its impact. Ultimately, outside of the few parts outlined, I’d be hard pressed to pinpoint any exciting songwriting. In fact, I’d have a hard time recalling any other specific moments. The album sits in the ears pleasantly, though unremarkably. 

In Nightmares, you can hear Renkse’s apparent desire for a less isolated songwriting experience—it’s easy to imagine collaborators invigorating the compositional ideas, and especially giving wings to the album’s strongest sections. A few more layers to the back half of “Efter Solen” could have made it a standout; the motif and outro in “The Light Which I Bleed” could have been built upon and modulated to exceptional effect; and more of the delightfully detailed but accessible passages like those in “Thrice” and “Lilac” might have taken form. Alas, the album continues the band’s trend further away from engaging and resonant and closer to simply passable. Katatonia remain masters of creating a distinct, compelling atmosphere, but the once-sharp songwriting is dulling. 

Hopefully, Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State is the closing of one chapter for the band, and the next is one of revitalization. Although the album is enjoyable, laying a few surprises and moments of inspiration atop Katatonia’s recognizable style, the need for a creative spark is clear. As with the two releases before it, too much of the album simply passes through the mind without leaving an impression—a shame for a band capable of delivering far more. Fortunately, Renkse has shifted the band’s sound several times before to great success, so it’s easy to remain optimistic that Katatonia’s next effort will have more staying power.

Recommended tracks: Thrice, Winds of no Change, Lilac, The Light Which I Bleed
You may also like: In the Silence, Oak, Ghost Brigade
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Napalm Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Katatonia is:
– Jonas Renkse (vocals)
– Niklas Sandin (bass)
– Daniel Moilanen (drums)
– Nico Elgstrand (guitars)
– Sebastian Svalland (guitars)

The post Review: Katatonia – Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by Chris Williams

Style: Thall, Djent, Progressive Metal (mixed vocals, mostly harsh)
Recommended for fans of: Meshuggah, Frontierer, Humanity’s Last Breath, Car Bomb
Country: Sweden
Release date: 30 May 2025

Metal suffers from an unfortunate theme where genre pioneers eventually fall prey to the very scenes they helped create, buckling under the weight of their own stagnating influence. Look no further than Morbid Angel’s Illud Divinum Insanus, Dream Theater’s The Astonishing, or Metallica’s Lulu or St. Anger. Metal seems to carry with it a curse of longevity for such foundational acts; surviving long enough nearly ensures an artist will produce one of their pioneered genre’s worst releases to go along with whatever classics they may have created in the past. 

Vildhjarta are one such foundational act, single-handedly pioneering the sound of thall, an offshoot style of djent. Even today, there are arguments about whether or not thall should be classified as a genre proper, but whatever side of the argument one falls on, there is an undeniable and clearly defined difference between the two sounds. Thall started as an in-joke between Vildhjarta members in 2009—a mispronunciation of “Thrall” (a World of Warcraft character)—following the viral success of their Omnislash demo within the then burgeoning djent scene, using it as a descriptor for their music but keeping silent about the term’s meaning. Other groups picked up on the new terminology, using it to describe their own sound as well, even if that sound was nowhere near Vildhjarta’s particular style. Thall was essentially memed into existence, coming to a head in 2011 with Uneven Structure featuring a thall sticker on one of their guitars in the music video for “Awaken”; Vildhjarta would also release their debut LP Måsstaden, clearly defining the sound for the first time, officially partitioning it off from djent. 

Since then, thall has grown into its own scene, with bands such as Frostbitt, Mirar, Indistinct, FRACTALIZE, and Allt exploring the sound’s limits and applications. Vildhjarta themselves would once again further thall’s horizons in 2013 with the release of their Thousands of Evils EP. At this point, thall had achieved a clear distinction from djent: gratuitous bends, pitch-shifted leads, wide interval jumps, a post-metal-inspired focus on ambience, an even more stilted rhythmic conceit, and a slowly evolving tonal language all its own. Vildhjarta would fall silent for eight more years before releasing their 2021 follow-up to Måsstaden—Måsstaden Under Vatten—signaling thall’s largest evolution in sound since 2013. Now in 2025, we are subject to + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, raising the question: Was Måsstaden Under Vatten a portent of continuing inspired evolution, or will Vildhjarta fall prey to metal’s ever-looming curse of longevity?

+ Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is, in some ways, a continuation of the sound explored on Måsstaden Under Vatten, which saw Vildhjarta take a step back from their more traditionally structured phrases and riff patterns, replacing their dense riff focus with a sparse, somber, and patient approach to songwriting. The songs were noticeably slower, with a reaffirmed focus on building a darker atmosphere and tension through synth textures and background guitar harmonies. + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + continues the focus on atmosphere, utilizing the same techniques as before, but ramping the riff density back up past even Måsstaden’s levels while maintaining the somber, meandering songwriting approach.

The marriage of labyrinthine riff passages and patient atmosphere feels like Vildhjarta’s most complete sound yet, but the more I listen to + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, the more I realize that this sound has also been forcibly repurposed as a contextual backdrop for them to fervently explore a budding new tonal language. Short staccato rhythmic bursts, off-kilter legato scale runs, and huge nauseating interval jumps remain Vildhjarta’s primary riffing style, though with a realigned focus on evolving their—and therefore thall’s—unique melodic sensibilities. The long legato lines halfway through “+ Sargasso +” are where the cracks in the tonal foundation first start to show, with odd, seemingly “wrong” note choices slipping their way into the melody. Right afterward, “+ Ylva +” blows the sound wide open, with the back half especially braving previously unexplored tonal territory within thall. The riff starting around two and a half minutes in is less of a riff and more of a schizophrenic inner dialogue, the cadence of which feels not quite call and response, but vaguely conversational. A hazy backing guitar harmony wraps itself around the entire second half of the track, adding to the feverishness, the entire section marking the first true declaration of significant evolution within the genre in years. 

While before, Vildhjarta’s sense of melody seemed to emerge from a rhythmic foundation, this time around it feels like the rhythms are blooming from a tonal center, acting primarily as a jagged vessel for the off-kilter melody to nestle within. The ramped-up syncopation feels intrinsic and primordial, necessitated by nascent tonality instead of the deliberate desideratum of a style. Vildhjarta have successfully shifted their core direction from a post-Meshuggah rhythmic ideology to a fully realized evolution of the somber, brooding melancholy that was germinating onMåsstaden Under Vatten. Guitarist Calle Thomer has crafted a unique melodic language all his own, mixing expansive open intervals with dense pulsing chromaticism that often has seemingly little to nothing to do with the accompanying atmospheric harmony. Riffs not only completely ignore the tonic, but drag it down into the bubbling tar pit from which they seemingly emerged. Backing guitar and synth provide what context they can, but the lead guitar will often be on another planet entirely, having a conversation with itself, compartmentalizing whatever grotesqueries it had beheld while stargazing from its cosmic perch. 

There has always been a fragmentation between Vildhjarta’s riff-craft and their surrounding performances, but it’s taken to further extremes on + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, leading even to pockets of polyphony within some of the busier phrases. Take the opening riff of “+ röda läppar, söta äpplen +”, which sounds as if one had just woken up and was hearing a muffled conversation from the other side of a door. The interstitial melody that weaves between the traditional djent chugs mimics the tonality and cadence of hushed discord, as if there were secrets lurking just beneath the auditory surface. Cascading approximations of a broken arpeggio follow shortly after, straying even further from any sense of diatonic comfort. 

Thomer’s guitar-wizardry is certainly the centerpiece of + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, but this doesn’t mean the other performances are anything to sneer at. Frontman Vilhelm Bladin’s ever-improving vocal performance continues to provide texture, acting as an anchor point for the cacophonous instrumentals. His clean singing in particular is more emotive than ever (“Där mossan möter havet,” “Kristallfågel,” “Viktlös & evig”), adding yet another layer of melodicism for the riffs to sink their consonance-decaying claws into. Drummer Buster Odeholm’s performance is phenomenal; he has a striking ability to toe the line between insidious groove and near-arbitrary syncopation, unifying the two extremes in distinct manner. My favorite example of Odeholm’s particular style begins about a minute and a half into “+Sargasso +”: A constant eighth note hi-hat keeps tempo while shifting crash cymbals swell alongside the kick drum, which follows the guitar’s intense syncopation. As the phrase continues, it threatens to fall apart completely as the pattern becomes more and more intricate with Odeholm adding his own ornamentation on top of it all, before finally collapsing into a breathing, pulsing synth break as the song passes the two-minute mark.

Vildhjarta slowly and consistently poke and prod at the corners of thall’s melodic language over the runtime of + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +, culminating in closing track “+ den spanska känslan +”, which climaxes around two-thirds of the way through with a phrase that fully lifts the veil off the previously gestural polyphony, opting to embrace it outright. A patiently funereal harmonized acoustic guitar line is introduced, only to be unceremoniously interrupted by a massive truck of a riff that completely ignores any mournful pretenses set up just moments beforehand. The acoustic line trudges on behind the mammoth tone of Thomer’s distortion, the most undiluted proclamation of Vildhjarta’s marriage between somber ambience, surreal tonality, and idiosyncratic rhythmic ideology to date. Moments like the above are eminently memorable but, as a whole, + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is less about the big standout moments than previous releases. The main focus this time around is on creating an alienating atmosphere through vague tonality, an atmosphere that ends up being antagonistic to genre newbies and veterans alike, perhaps not intentionally but as a result of its sheer otherness. 

+ Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is—much like its cover art—rigorously technical and feverishly psychedelic, traits that are caught in a war of attrition, proliferating each other through constant battle-metamorphosis. These traits, along with every other trait mentioned thus far, form a howling constellation of stars that are connected through Vildhjarta’s paradoxical stylistic throughline of tonality by way of consistent dis-melodicism. Stare long enough into the night sky, and this constellation spirals into a whorling vortex, spilling forth hallucinatory aural terror from an eerie unknown. Indeed, Vildhjarta have convincingly eluded metal’s persistent curse of longevity, once again taking a leaping stride of innovation, dragging the entirety of thall behind them.

Recommended tracks: + Två vackra svanar +, + Sargasso +, + Den spanska känslan +
You may also like: Frostbitt, Mirar, Reflections, Uneven Structure
Final verdict: 10/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Century Media Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Vildhjarta is:
– Vilhelm Bladin (vocals)
– Calle Thomer (guitars, bass)
– Buster Odeholm (drums, bass)

The post Review: Vildhjarta – + Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + appeared first on The Progressive Subway.