It took a few years, but with "The Great Cold Distance", Katatonia once again proves to be one of the top bands when it comes to dark, emotional music. Jonas Renkse called me to tell all about the new album:

We are very happy with "The Great Cold Distance"! We worked a very long time on it, including the songwriting and the preproduction, maybe even too long, who can tell? We did most of the writing and the preproduction in the studio and we mainly produced the album ourselves, under guidance of the studio owner. But when I look back, it was worth all the time we spent on it and it was good to work this way.

The title represents the distance I feel between human beings. Interhuman relationships are difficult, people don't want to get too close, for they are afraid of being hurt. I can relate to this subject myself too, it's just difficult. Our lyrics relate to the title and aren't that happy again, just like we always did. Making happy music isn't something for me anyway; not that I am always depressed, I am having good times too, but it just feels better to make depressing music. It doesn't depress me at all by the way, depressing music usually makes me feel good.

  Relating to previous albums, Jonas continues:

I think we have found our style now. We always try to do different things, but Katatonia has a good foundation and we are happy with our current style of music. We started playing doom metal with rough vocals, but we didn't want to do that anymore and decided to make a new start. So we have been expanding quite a lot and it took some time, but we have development our style now.

It is difficult to label our own music, most people say gothic metal. "The Great Cold Distance" is more metal than the previous albums, as every album is a reaction to its predecessor. This time we wanted more heavy riffing and keyboards to create more of a spark with our live shows.

The main differences with the previous album, "Viva Emptiness", is that we spent more time in the studio. We always want to write better songs and to top ourselves, which gives a lot of inspiration and presses us to an optimal performance. And I personally think we succeeded in topping ourselves again in the studio, especially the drums are great, for we worked with a drum technician now, making Daniel more inspired.

I wouldn't say that I am a true perfectionist though, although I have my hang-ups, especially songwise. Jens, the studio owner, is a severe perfectionist though, pushing us really hard to create a technically perfect recording. Before we relied more on our feelings for takes, which resulted in less perfection, but that was okay too.

  The promotional copy that I have contains voice-overs. Jonas:

That was a label decision, we don't have anything to do with that. I think it's a pity that this is needed, but on the other hand it really bugs me when albums leak before the official release date, so I understand the decision. I miss the times when release dates were special, this whole download culture takes the mystery away. I am a real record collector myself; I even buy records that I don't like, just to have the collection complete. There are certain bands I simply must buy, like the lo-fi artist Prince Billy: he changed his style and I don't like it anymore, but still I buy those records.

We are very happy with the promotion for this album though, we even had a single for airplay for the first time, which hopefully will be played on some rock oriented radio channels and we even made a video for the "My Twin" single. I don't care much for things like this, but if it gets us more fans, it's cool. We are also busy booking a small European tour and some festivals in the summer. There will be a bigger tour in the fall of this year.

There has been a re-release of "Dance of December Souls" that Jonas isn't very happy with:

This re-release totally sucks. They just put a new (and ugly) cover on it and used our new logo to give people the idea that this was a new Katatonia output. We just had to tell people not to buy it, although we still like our older songs and we are very proud of them. An album like "Brave Murder Day" is unique and we will never regret our past recordings.

  Katatonia members have had a few side projects, but only one is still alive:

The only side-project left is Bloodbath. October Tide was too close to Katatonia, so it lost its function, but Bloodbath is 100% death metal. We started it for fun, but it's grown into something more serious, so now we really want to achieve something with this band too, although we're still looking for a new singer to complete the band. After the third album we want to go touring, but it's hard to find time.

What does the future hold?

First we have to promote this album and get feedback on it, then there will be the tour and the festival season. After the tour in the fall, we're gonna concentrate on songwriting for the next album, for three years between album, what happened now, is too long, two years is better. So you'll be hearing from us!