{"id":791940,"date":"2026-10-04T19:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T19:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791940\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T19:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T19:02:14","slug":"how-katatonia-became-swedens-answer-to-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791940\/","title":{"rendered":"How Katatonia became Sweden\u2019s answer to Tool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katatonia<\/a> spent the 2000s climbing up the Swedish hard rock ranks. Then, after 2012 album Dead End Kings<\/a>, they were hailed as Scandinavia\u2019s answer to Tool<\/a>. That year Prog spoke to singer Jonas Renkse<\/a> about line-up changes, nuclear disasters and recording underneath a halfway house.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the summer of 2012 and a stressed Jonas Renkse is in a minuscule studio in London, about to play Dead End Kings<\/a> to journalists for the first time. He hasn\u2019t had time to live with the new album himself \u2013 the band only finished it a few hours earlier. \u201cWe had to master Dead End Kings on the evening before I left or even on the same day,\u201d the Swedish frontman remembers. \u201cMy CD was the only copy so far. If it got broken on the way we\u2019d have nothing to show anyone.\u201d On arrival he was thrown into a stifling routine: \u201cTen journalists came in. We\u2019d play the album, they\u2019d go out for snacks and ten new people would come in. I just sat there getting more and more drunk, trying to see on their faces if they liked it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert: they liked it. Not a surprise reaction, in hindsight, considering every Katatonia release before it had been a critical success. Early albums Dance Of December Souls and Brave Murder Day had expanded the growling brutality of the 90s death\/doom metal movement into vast prog songs. Then, in 1998, a host of new, sullen influences, as well as Renkse\u2019s screaming technique shredding his throat, dictated a softer goth rock turn on Discouraged Ones.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n

From there the Katatonia brand became all about endowing dark anthems with increasingly avant-garde rhythms. The 2000s heralded such mainstays as July, My Twin and Ghost Of The Sun, not to mention a lineup \u2013 Renkse, guitarists Anders Nystr\u00f6m<\/a> and Fredrik Norrman, bassist Mattias Norrman and drummer Daniel Liljekvist \u2013 that lasted for the whole decade.<\/p>\n

Dead End Kings\u2019 predecessor, 2009\u2019s Night Is The New Day<\/a>, even pushed the band to the then-highest chart position of their career when it reached number 39 in Sweden. Life was going pretty damn well.<\/p>\n

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Katatonia – Lethean (from Dead End Kings) – YouTube
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\u201cIt was a very good time,\u201d Renkse says of the 00s. \u201cAt the same time as Night was released, we started working with our management, Northern Music Company. We went from being self-managed to being part of a group that gave us opportunities to play places that we hadn\u2019t played before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the Norrmans exiting in December 2009, the early 2010s maintained the band\u2019s momentum. Northern snagged them longer tours with the likes of Opeth<\/a> and Swallow The Sun<\/a>, paving the way for Dead End Kings to be Katatonia\u2019s most successful material to date. In Sweden, it rocketed to number 12 on the charts. Plus the reviews \u2013 including those from the journalists crammed into that studio with an increasingly inebriated Renkse \u2013 were glowing.<\/p>\n

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In Classic Rock magazine, Malcolm Dome noted that the Swedes\u2019 prog flirtations had evolved into overtones, and compared their ninth album to the works of Porcupine Tree<\/a> and Opeth: the \u201cstealthy ambient atmosphere is obviously rooted in the visions of Steven Wilson<\/a>,\u201d he wrote. Other reviewers went so far as to label the band as Sweden\u2019s answer to Tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While some may have raise their eyebrows at such comparisons, there\u2019s no denying that Dead End Kings was Katatonia\u2019s proggiest moment up to that point. After opening song The Parting commences with Renkse\u2019s melodic howls, it bursts into an off-kilter rock riff. Alien time signatures go on to define the entire album, from the scattering percussion underneath Hypnone\u2019s clean guitar strums to Dead Letters\u2019 back-and-forth between machine-gun chugs and post-rock arpeggios.<\/p>\n

Dead End Kings also shares prog\u2019s penchant for drama through strings and keys, which carry over from Night Is The New Day and 2006\u2019s The Great Cold Distance. Cellos swell at the outset of The Racing Heart, before, on Ambitions, synths bubble in isolation beneath Renkse\u2019s pleas of \u201cHear my thin voice.\u201d Such touches were so significant to the album that, a year after it came out, Katatonia released Dethroned And Uncrowned<\/a>: a stripped-down redo of Dead End Kings that had just the vocals, keyboards and classical instruments, as well as a handful of newly recorded acoustic guitar takes.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen we were mixing, David [Costello], who recorded the album, muted all the guitars and drums,\u201d Renkse explains. \u201cWe realised how much music was going on that you wouldn\u2019t really hear over all the metal stuff \u2013 it was fascinating. We realised: \u2018Wow, this is another album!\u2019 We just kept talking about it. It sounded good enough to be made into a companion release. Dethroned was a fun, interesting experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story of Dead End Kings begins on December 22, 2009: the day Mattias and Fredrik Norrman said they were leaving the band, after 10 and 15 years respectively. Renkse remembers the news \u201cwas a shock. We had a solid line-up for a long time and, all of a sudden it wasn\u2019t there any more. Of course that\u2019ll affect you \u2013 both the band and you personally \u2013 but they did it for the right reasons. We had no fighting, no drama: just cold, hard facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fredrik and Mattias still come to our gigs when we play Stockholm. Sometimes they say they regret quitting the band<\/p>\n

He attributes their departure to the management\u2019s drive to get the band more time on tour. The statistics certainly corroborate that \u2013 the following year was the band\u2019s busiest ever for live shows. \u201cFredrik and Mattias had good jobs and they didn\u2019t want to be on the road all the time,\u201d Renkse confirms. \u201cThey had boss positions, so they got decent pay, and they had kids and houses. So I totally understand and respect their decision. They still come to our gigs when we play Stockholm. Sometimes they say they regret quitting the band!\u201d<\/p>\n

To replace the duo, Katatonia tapped guitarist Per Eriksson and bassist Niklas Sandin, both of whom appear on Dead End Kings. Renkse knew Eriksson through their death metal side-project Bloodbath, in which the player had the charming nickname of \u201cSodomizer.\u201d He met Sandin through a mutual friend who was bragging about how fast a learner his new bassist was \u2013 so Renkse stole him. \u201cNiklas had never even been on tour at that point,\u201d he recalls, \u201cbut he was a super easygoing and friendly guy, so he was in.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a 2010 packed with concerts, Katatonia began composing Dead End Kings in 2011. Notably, the writing went back to being a two-man process between Renkse and Nystr\u00f6m, as it had been on The Great Cold Distance and every album before it. On Night Is The New Day, in contrast, the guitarist had suffered writer\u2019s block and only contributed ideas to two of its 11 songs.<\/p>\n

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\"Katatonia\"\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Press)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been up and down with that for a few years now,\u201d Renkse says. \u201cI try to write music all the time and end up throwing away a lot of garbage, but Anders needs to be inspired: he needs a certain mood for writing. When you have a family and other parts of your life that aren\u2019t connected to music, it can take a lot of time and energy from you. He wrote more stuff on Dead End Kings though, and the album after that, The Fall Of Hearts<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like earlier records, Dead End Kings\u2019 lyrics tackle depression, mistrust and alienation. As Renkse summarises: \u201cI like abstract stuff.\u201d However, some songs are more specific. The Parting, for example, was his attempt to enter the headspace of a refugee: \u201cI was trying to understand what it would be like to leave your home and your country. I\u2019m a safe Swedish guy; I have no idea what it\u2019s like.\u201d<\/p>\n

to scare away potential burglars, a band put a radio on super loud and left it overnight. It always sounded like a party<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, bonus track The Act Of Darkening is about the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, while Buildings and Undo You both explore Renkse and Nystr\u00f6m\u2019s hobby of visiting abandoned villages. \u201cWe went to a mine called Str\u00e5ssa Gruva. There was a little town around it with kindergartens and grocery stores, and it was all just left to rot. I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m so intrigued by these places; but it\u2019s fascinating knowing that something was once so vibrant, and now it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says he felt the same vibe in the Dead End Kings studio as he had from such derelict scenes. Unable to reuse the spot they\u2019d used to track Night Is The New Day, they holed up in the basement of a halfway house, located in a \u201cshitty neighbourhood\u201d in Stockholm. \u201cThere was always something unnerving going on,\u201d he reflects. \u201cI remember finding a room that looked like a cave, with a slaughtered police car in it. There were guards working 24 hours a day, walking the corridor with dogs. I had a dog at the time, and sometimes I had to bring it to the studio. David stopped my vocal takes so many times because the dogs were fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cNext to the studio was a rehearsal room, and there\u2019d been a break-in in there. So, to scare away potential burglars, a band put a radio on super loud and left it overnight. It always sounded like there was a party in that room.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a testament to Katatonia\u2019s talents that they were able to make something as refined as Dead End Kings in such a shithole. It defined their later output, especially follow-up The Fall Of Hearts, which leant even heavier into prog rock with its twisting time signatures and grand song structures.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m super proud of Dead End Kings,\u201d Renkse enthuses. \u201cI think it\u2019s a quality album; I think it\u2019s sophisticated. When we play those songs live, it feels like they\u2019re part of the more recent stuff that we\u2019ve done. But 10 years is a long time \u2013 we get a weird feeling every when we play them. Where has the time gone?\u201d<\/p>\n

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