Three years have passed since the release of the highly successful "The Great Cold Distance" and this year Katatonia release its successor entitled "Night Is The New Day". The Swedes from the beginning of their careers constantly experimented with their sound and so each of their albums was more or less different from their older ones. So their 8th full-length studio album does not violate this informal rule and differs from their recent works. The band described the album as "our most varied, diverse and possibly strongest shit all together on one and the same album". While it may seem difficult to believe it, the above statement reflects in a large percentage what Katatonia have managed to achieve in "Night Is The New Day".

More specifically, Katatonia generally manage to combine in their new album the melodic and slow parts of the "Tonight's Decision" (1999) and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" (2001) albums with elements from "The Great Cold Distance" (2006). The heavy riffs are largely absent, apart from 2-3 songs and some louder outbursts, and their music follows a more gentle, melancholic and melodic road. Also in several songs we find scattered elements that refer directly to Opeth (something which is entirely logical if one considers the good friendship of Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström with Mikael Åkerfeldt as well as their frequent collaborations).The lyrics follow the well known dark full of pain and sadness style of Katatonia. As far as the music, guitarist Anders Nystrom does not change his familiar and expressive guitar style, limiting only the heavy riffs and yet for another album he composed beautiful music, creating the appropriate melancholic and dark atmosphere and applied his guitar style to the mood of each song. In the creation of this dark atmosphere the   keyboards (which were recorded by Frank Default) contributed very much having an increased role compared to their previous records. But what makes "Night Is The New Day" special is the amazing clean vocals of Jonas Renkse who approaches each song differently producing with the tone of his voice the darkness, the pain and the feelings of the lyrics. Truly astonishing!

The album starts dynamically with "Forsaker" which is the heaviest song of the album. "The Longest Year" that follows continues in the same style and is a typical Katatonia song. After these, however, things change, passing on a more soft and melancholic style. The beautiful "Idle Blood" could very easily be included in an Opeth album, and the next one "Onward Into Battle"  contains many Opeth elements combined with the band’s own style. All the songs of "Night Is The New Day" are very good maintaining a very high quality making it difficult to tell which songs stand out. Besides the songs mentioned above, which ones could anyone say are the best? "Nephilim"?  "Inheritance"? "Day and Then the Shade" (For which a video clip was shot)? Or the beautiful and dark "Departer" with the thrilling performance of Jonas Renkse?

"Night Is The New Day" is an album that keeps the interest of the listener undiminished from the first until the last song. One of the best releases of the year.