Katatonia
March 29, 2017
El Rey Theatre – Los Angeles, CA
Katatonia is a progressive metal band that hails all the way from Stockholm, Sweden. In May of 2016, they released their tenth studio album titled, The Fall of Hearts. To promote the album and pay a visit to their American fans, Katatonia set out on the Fallen Hearts tour with Caspian and Uncured. The El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles was the venue of choice for this show. By the time Katatonia came on stage, the venue was just over half full which made for a nice turnout for this show.
Katatonia came out and started the show with Last Song Before the Fade from the newest album. Being a progressive metal band, Katatonia‘s sound isn’t necessarily heavy or fast like other progressive metal bands. It’s more on the progressive rock side, especially with this last album. The music is calm and soothing with clean vocals and can be used if you’re looking to relax and have a calm time at one of their shows. The next song played was Criminals followed by Dead Letters from their previous Dead End Kings album. For most of the show, Katatonia‘s stage was covered by dark blue and red lights that often made it hard to see the band, but at the same time matched the atmosphere that the band’s music had. Frontman Jonas Renkse most of the time had his long hair in his face and made it difficult to see his face. Katatonia played one of their popular hits Teargas and had fans singing along which is always a beautiful sight between fans and a band. Renkse took a quick break to talk to the fans about how Los Angeles is his favorite city to play and swore he doesn’t say that to every city. He then proceeded to say that this next song is from their final album. Fans seemed confused for a second and Renkse had to clarify that he meant from their newest release as they haven’t decided yet if their newest album will be their last. After clearing up he confusion, the band continued the show with Residual. Nearing the end of the show, Katatonia played In the White from one of their best albums, The Great Cold Distance. Fans cheered as this song was played and plenty of head banging was seen amongst the crowd. Katatonia finished the show with Passer and left the stage. Fans weren’t ready to go just yet as they stayed put and chanted the band’s name hoping they’d come out again. The band listened and came back out for a few encores. The first encore was one of the band’s best songs My Twin and fans could once again be seen singing along to this beautiful track. Lethean was next and to finish off the show, Katatonia played July. Throughout the whole show, the band was very well received by fans and smiles were seen everywhere. It was a Wednesday night well spent.
Review by: Misael Ruiz
