52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #17

36 Crazyfists – A Snow Capped Romance

(Roadrunner, 2004)

Buy the album here

That first experience of moving away from home, of leaving family and friends to live far away, is one of the most testing.  To embark on a new life without that emotional support around you, no familiar faces, and no quick fixes makes those connections you still have even more important.  That’s why packing a selection of CDs before I moved to rural Japan in 2004 turned out to be one of the most important small moments in my life.  That little anchor to home meant I always felt like I had somewhere to turn when loneliness would punch me in the gut, or when I simply needed to express myself in my own language.  There were various albums that meant a lot to me during my two years living in the hills of southwest Fukushima, Black Label Society – Hangover Music Vol. VI and a CD of ceilidh music by The Foundry Band as honourable mentions, but A Snow Capped Romance is the defining one.  Some of my clearest memories of that time have this music as their backdrop, and I’ll never forget how it helped me think of home, appreciate where I was, and remember the love I have for my friends and family.  36 Crazyfists might not be a band name that conjures these sorts of thoughts, but it belies the strength of their songwriting and their emotional honesty, and I’ll always be thankful for those qualities.

While Bitterness The Star was an exciting and interesting debut, “Circle The Drain” in particular capturing my imagination, A Snow Capped Romance represented a gigantic leap in the band’s abilities.  It had always been clear that each of the musicians - Steve Holt on guitar, Brock Lindow on vocals, Thomas Noonan on drums, and Mick Whitney on bass – could play the hell out of their instruments, but in cleaning up the production, adding a dash more emo, and giving more consideration to the “shape” of the whole record, 36 Crazyfists made a truly memorable album with vital vocal hooks, a metalcore guitar masterclass, and an impressive yet self-effacing rhythm section performance that deserves celebration.  Lying somewhere between mid-career Incubus and Vision of Disorder, there is enough outright aggression and heart-on-sleeve sensitivity to satisfy fans of hardcore and emo alike.  Take back-to-back tracks “Bloodwork” and “Kenai” as an example of the whole: the former an impassioned single with loads of melodic clean vocals, an Incubus-esque intro, and big hooky guitar parts that landed it on a Resident Evil movie soundtrack; the latter a knife attack in song form with cyclonic guitar riffs where the choruses are momentary escapes from the assault on your senses.  Both feel like 36 Crazyfists songs and never suggest they are overstretching themselves, but provide a scope to this work that means I return over and over. 

I’m still moved to tears hearing the words from “Kenai”, and I can remember driving the sparsely populated snowy mountain roads alone being reminded of the distance to home, the little hole I felt in my heart, and the honour I had to have such good family and friends:

Over these mountains I feel safe.

And bless the sound, return the day.

Over these mountains I feel safe.

And I guess I miss my home,

I could not stay.

I'll return, it's alright, I'm ok.

These emotions are reignited in “Skin and Atmosphere” with a melodramatic yet insightful examination of a struggling relationship told through delicate verses and driving, powerful choruses.  Brock Lindow’s screams of “I want you to prove me wrong” are instantly relatable, and herein lies the band’s strength: in giving equal footing to expressions of anger, longing, despair, hope, and love, they harness the complexity of human relationships, both with people and places, and give the listener freedom to feel all these emotions at once.  “Destroy The Map” taps into this again with its irresistible chorus and guest vocal by Raithon Clay, while “Installing the Catheter” and “Cure Eclipse” turn up the hardcore intensity again with dark themes, heavier bridge sections, and Lindow’s soaring and scything vocals.  Bringing an album of this emotional intensity to a close could be tricky, but in the patient beauty and emotional brutality of “Waterhaul” 36 Crazyfists manage to consolidate all the themes they have explored in one mid-paced, burning ember of a song.  It seems to be performed both by candle light and wildfire, before it drifts off into the back of your mind leaving only traces of the emotions you felt, the people you saw, and the places you visited along the way.

Even if I lose my hearing as I get older I’ll never forget the sounds, emotions, and thoughts of this album.  There are few albums that have ever managed to perfectly fit my personality, but this is one, and it taught me that music need not always be an escape from real life, but sometimes a reminder of those places and people in that very real life.  It’s an album that makes me think of the people and places I love, and to never take them for granted.  And with that impact on me, this album was one of the first things I thought of when I recently returned to the village in Japan where I had lived over 11 years ago.   

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #45

Katatonia – The Great Cold Distance

(Peaceville Records, 2006)

Buy the album here

On the way to Tower Records in Shibuya in 2006 there was a small, and I assume independent, music shop. Unlike the amazingly durable Tower Records which still exists, I also assume that the shop has long since closed, but on that sunny early summer day over 10 years ago they performed their greatest moment of capitalist charity. They were selling off CDs sitting in boxes left on the pavement in front of the shop window. You would assume that these CDs were the unsellable rubbish of 2006, such as Nick Lachey's What's Left Of Me, and that may have been so, but there was at least one gem in there not even hidden from the eyes of Tokyo's shoppers. Was I the only one seeing this? Katatonia's The Great Cold Distance was in plain sight with a price so low that I still think I'm misremembering it. The exchange rate has changed a lot since then, but in 2006 ¥500 would have been equivalent to roughly £2.50, which makes this album one of the greatest value purchases of all time. It was still a very new release at that time, and I've failed in my attempts to apply logic to its pricing other than to surmise that Japan isn't hot for sorrowful, melodic, doom-inspired metal from depressed looking Swedes. Japan's loss was my gain, and Katatonia and I have been having a love affair ever since.

Some might think that it's difficult to get close to a band with the appropriately cold and distant approach to songwriting that Katatonia display here. But the almost clinical delivery, crisp production, and Jonas Renkse's restrained melodic vocals lend their sorrow a certain Brechtian distance that promotes deep contemplation rather than expressive anguish, and allow the more “metal” moments to stand out. That's not to say this record isn't sonically as well as emotionally heavy. With brutal thrashers like “The Itch” Katatonia display the ferocity that makes clear their associations with acts like Opeth, Bloodbath, and even their legendary British indie label, Peaceville. But Katatonia's music works in different ways to heavy music predicated on the notion that lighter moments, such as a groovy guitar riff in an otherwise brutal grindcore song, provide the necessary relief and respite from the intense building of tension that precedes it. On The Great Cold Distance the musically heavier moments are the listener's chance to escape the sorrowful darkness of the gentle instrumentation and introspection that are at the heart of what Katatonia do. Banging your head to the heavy parts of “Soil's Song” provides an escape from the oppressive wintery feel of the opening and bridge sections, as if releasing you from the tundra of this Swedish soil.

“My Twin” and “Consternation” encapsulate all that later Katatonia have come to represent: the former providing a forlorn ballad with a catchy and floating chorus, while the latter displays Anders Nyström's vicious guitar sound, superb songwriting, and drumming equally at home in death metal and acoustic folk. In fact, it's Katatonia's songwriting excellence and skill with their respective instruments that sets them apart from other bands that have tried such melodic dark metal. No other band can appeal equally to fans of Evanescence and Death. If you are in the position of trying to convince a friend that metal is for them then Katatonia might be the ideal gateway band to get them hooked on even harder stuff.

“In The White” is the cold, distant heart of this album, and is the perfect song with which to introduce newcomers. The poppy bass line counters lilting guitars that lead us to Renkse's opening lullaby:

Are you in or are you out

The words are stones in my mouth

Hush little baby don't you cry

Truth comes down

Strikes me in the eye

The verses float along on the bass line allowing the vocal to gently guide us through this dark loneliness before the chorus offers a solution:

To overcome this

I become one with

The quiet cold of late November

But as with all Katatonia, this respite is fleeting and we are pulled back down to the “quiet cold”. It's a song, an album, and a band that balances hope and despair, light and dark. Even though it was a warm, sunny day in Tokyo when I was a newcomer to Katatonia, I will always remember it as a sharp, cold, dark, and beautiful moment in a frozen Scandinavian landscape. Japan has had my heart since I lived there over 10 years ago, but my musical heart has been pulling towards Sweden ever since that day in 2006.