Live albums are a strange thing: to some people they are a way of connecting with a band on a different level entirely, getting the atmosphere from a concert and seeing how the band perform live without actually being there to witness it. To others they’re just a bit rubbish and not as good as seeing the band live or listening to them properly recorded.
Take this new release from Katatonia. Recorded last year on their Dethroned & Uncrowned tour, which features songs from their 2012 release Dead End Kings reworked, as well as others songs from across their extensive career, and recorded in the Union Chapel in London. The album is actually just the soundtrack from a longer film of the same name that the band have decided to release.
The thing is, this album has been diddled around with a little bit, made to sound a bit better, had the sound levels balanced. Essentially all of the things that you would hope that a band would do whenever they record themselves live.
Which means that those wanting to make a big case for the release of live albums should really take heed of this one. The production quality on it is so good it is occasionally easy to forget that this was all recorded in a small(ish) chapel in London, something which you also forget when you consider how stellar the band are at performing their songs. Bear in mind the band had never really done anything as stripped-back as this before, and songs like ‘Gone’ had never been played in a live scenario.
The main difference between this and other live albums, though, is that you can actually just listen to it as an album in its own right. If you can put up with the crowd occasionally whooping in between songs then this is basically just a greatest hits album recorded acoustically. Mostly with live albums you have to put up with the crowd being a lot more rowdy than this, and the band (singers especially) not being note perfect.
As an album this is pretty cool – the concert film itself is almost certainly a hell of a lot more impressive by the sound of it. The album itself is more just a supplement of the film as a whole, but even so it manages to immerse you completely in the sound of this band creating such wonderful music in such a wonderful venue, and not once slipping up or giving you the impression that they are anything other than true professionals.
