With Dead End Kings (Peaceville) being released last year it came as quite surprised that another Katatonia album saw the light last month. However, Dethroned And Uncrowned (Kscope) isn’t just an “another” record. It features stripped down and reworked versions of the Dead End Kings material. Ghost Cult talked with Katatonia guitarist and main composer Anders Nystrom about this remarkable release, the potential of crowdfunding and touring in America.
Dethroned And Uncrowned features some very interesting reinterpretations of material off the Dead End Kings album. When did you get the idea to commence a project like this?
The whole idea behind the project came to us in quite an unexpected way. We didn’t plan it or see it coming. During the recording of Dead End Kings there were some moments when it dawned on us that a lot of the material would work in a more stripped down approach. During the mixing we muted the guitar and drum channels to hear what was going on underneath. Each time we did that we just smiled and thought how well those songs would sound without drums and heavy guitars. We weren’t quite ready at the time to do something with it, because we had our mind set on releasing a traditional Katatonia record with all the bells and whistles that come with it. We decided to shelve the idea for the time being and revisit it later again, once Dead End Kings was done and we had done a fair bit of touring in support of the album. Once we picked up the idea again we had to convince our management and the label that pursuing this idea was the right thing to do (laughs).
To what extent did you choose to stick close to the essence of the original songs and to how much did you need to alter arrangements and such stuff?
It was a very delicate process and I treated each and every song very differently. There wasn’t a format which I could apply to every song. It didn’t work like that. The easiest way to go about things was to simply delete the drum parts and the distortion. One push on the button and they were gone. The challenging bit came with how to fill the void those deleted parts left. Since we’re going with the whole stripped down approach the most beautiful instrument to fill the void is an acoustic guitar. So we brought in six and twelve string acoustic guitars. Some rhythm guitar parts proved to be quite tricky being transcribed to an acoustic treatment, so I had to find new chord progressions and bass notes. Other tracks lend themselves very well for the things we wanted to do with them and they weren’t tinkered with. It was a very challenging and interesting process and I really enjoyed doing this.
Is this whole stripped down-approach a part of a bigger project?
Well, we’re not going back to the studio and applying this approach to our older albums. It would be more like a special evening with Katatonia and recording it for a later possible DVD release. This was a one of a kind project that worked out really well, but we’re not interested in revisiting this again. However, in a live environment when touring for this album we will apply this stripped-down approach to our older material as well. If we can make a DVD out of that people will have a live recording of those alternate versions and not a studio recording. I think that’s the way forward for us now.
The whole project was launched via crowdfunding, a means which more and more bands are turning to in order to get their music out. How do you guys go about it?
We felt that this was something new we should try. We have been monitoring it, and many other bands have tried this like you said. It was interesting to see whether this sort of independence would work. In the beginning we didn’t get any sort of support for this album from our label. People simply didn’t know what to expect and it was basically just my idea and my words. My idea was to let the end result talk for itself and now the label simply loves it. Nobody had any idea what to expect from the whole project. The whole pledge campaign was good timing to put two experiments into one, namely the album itself and whole campaign surrounding it. Both were dependent on each other and they worked out both successfully. The campaign went down much better and much faster than I anticipated.
Do you think crowdfunding is the way forward for bands to bring out their music in this day and age?
I definitely think so yes. It’s very important for an artist to have creative control and nobody telling you what to do. When you have control over your music and how and when you’re going to release it, it opens so much freedom and new possibilities. When done successfully you sort of eliminate the middleman in a way, in this case the record labels. But you still need to have a long term goal and strategy, because you still need funding for touring and promotion. It’s a delicate thing. You just can’t go in and sever the ties with your label and end up having no support for any tour. People have to think about the big picture here. This exactly what we’re doing. We’re still signed to Kscope and Peaceville, but we have the freedom to start a project like Dethroned And Decrowned via our own means. Perhaps one day we can actually stand up and work without any labels. Who knows.
Other bands like Chimaira and Protest The Hero have pretty successful pledge campaigns of their own. Just like Katatonia they have been around for quite some time and they all have a solid fanbase. How important is it for a successful pledge campaign to have a well-developed fanbase?
It’s essential. In order to be successful you need to have a good platform and in this case the platform is your fanbase. If we didn’t have that it would be like jumping in the water and drowning. It all comes down to the loyalty of your fans. Luckily our fanbase is still growing and we’re really thankful that we have such loyal fans that enable us to do a project like Dethroned. It can only get better from here. That’s way I see it.
Katatonia has a very loyal fanbase, but when working on those reworked songs were you afraid the fans wouldn’t embrace the project?
While working on those songs I knew that there would be two camps. One side would consist of people who simply wouldn’t get the idea behind this project. The other camp would embrace this step and actually sense the vision behind it. It’s perfectly fine with me and I respect everyone’s decision which version of the songs they prefer. It’s not for me to make that kind of decision for them or to put words in their mouths. Ideally, I hope that as many people as possible will embrace both versions of the song, just like I do. I feel that both Dead End Kings and Dethroned and Uncrowned really complement each other. The important thing here is to prove to ourselves and to our fanbase and the rest of the world that we’re actually capable of doing an album like this. At this point in our career we’re really confident to follow our intuition and go with it. Hopefully our fanbase is open-minded enough to at least respect this.
Finally, you’ll be touring the US soon with Cult Of Luna, Tesseract and Intronaut. This is pretty much a dream lineup for anyone with a penchant for prog and post-metal. What are your expectations?
Personally I think the lineup is killer. This is probably the most progressive bill we’ve ever been on. All those bands are really driven and ambitious and I think people will get a lot of value for their money. The run isn’t that long you know. It’s just three weeks really. It’s all about hitting the major markets with this one. It will be a short but sweet tour. Because we toured the US twice already for Dead End Kings, this time around we’ll a vastly different setlist with lots of surprises. We have so many songs and b-sides we haven’t touched in a long time, so it will be a good reason for people to come out and see us live again. We won’t play any material off the Dethroned And Uncrowned album, we’re looking at doing a separate tour for that early next year. We like to keep that separated, because it takes so much time and preparation. There’s some beautiful irony in there. For a stripped down tour you need to arrange more than for a regular Katatonia tour (laughs).
Raymond Westland