Stockholm Syndrome

Since their humble death metal beginnings in the early 90s, Swedish alt-metallers KATATONIA have emerged as one of the European scene’s valuable progressive gems. Guitarist Anders Nyström tells TG how he thinks differently as a player behind his synthetic wall of noise…

- Amit Sharma

Here are many bands that formed in the fires of Scandinavia’s early 90s metal scene and slowly meandered away from their  heavy roots, but none quite in the same way as Katatonia – who experimented with a new digital heart to beat their melancholic musings into the coldest of stratospheres. Up to a certain point, theirs was a sound very much shared with brother band and fellow Stockholmers Opeth, their leader Mikael Åkerfeldt even singing on the early Katatonia recordings. But where one band disappeared down the rabbit hole of earthy 70s psychedelia, the other undertook a very different course indeed, embracing the harsher and digitized sounds of tomorrow. Today they stand tall as master conjurers of sorrow, their icy reflections very much in spirit with their gothic roots, and yet with arguably more dynamic reach than any of their peers that “simply stuck to metal”. Backstage at London’s O2 Shepherds Bush Empire, founding guitarist Anders Nyström reveals how his thirst for the extreme took an unexpected twist into a world of dark rock inspired by Massive Attack, Depeche Mode and The Cure…

KEY TO THE HIGHWAY

HOW THE KATATONIA GUITARIST UNLOCKED THE DOOR TO THE KEYBOARD WORLD…