Katatonia - Dead End Kings Special edition

This is the new album from Katatonia. It comes in  what is called a special book edition. I came to think about that a lot of records have a special edition version that is exactly that. This is the third one I've got so far this year (both the Baroness and Dead Can Dance albums came in book editions) and I also await a book edition of the Converge album. 

Anyways,  this is a really cool edition with CD, DVD and 2x10" vinyls. It also comes with an autographed certificate! Very cool indeed! As for the actual music it's too early to give a verdict as I've only listened to the album a couple of times but it sounds really promising. It follows the successful recipe of their previous albums.

The autographed certificate.

Upcoming release from Katatonia.

A couple of weeks ago we got the first listen (and view) on what to expect on the upcoming Katatonia release.




This is the song "Dead Letters" from the album "Dead End Kings", which is released at the end of August. Ideally it would have been released maybe a month later as Katatonia usually is the perfect autumn soundtrack. Here in Scandinavia there is nothing saying that fall won't start in early September though...

This sounds like the Katatonia we have learned to love over the last ten-fifteen years, an über dark rock band and not the atmospheric black metal band they started out as... I like this Katatonia over the old one!

The last record they made, "Night Is The New Day" is still one of my favourite records of '09 and I ranked it at number three at the time.

Half way through 2012.

So we're just over halfway through the year of 2012. I'm sad to say that it hasn't been the awesome year, record wise, as 2011 was...

All in all I got about 80 records from last year but so far I only have 15-20 records from this year. I don't think that I will get anywhere near as many records this year, there just aren't that many good ones to look forward too.

I have a couple on pre-order that I'm really looking forward to (Katatonia and Baroness) and I'm gonna get the Smashing Pumpkins album the next time I'm at The Garden.

The best record of the year so far is without a doubt The Mars Volta's seventh album "Noctourniquet". I'm wating for it to arrive in the mail box, it was sent from the US two weeks ago so it should be here any day now. I'll write more about the album once I've got the vinyl.

Other records worth mentioning:
Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls
Beach House - Bloom
High On Fire - De Vermiis Mysteriis
Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral
Meshuggah - Koloss
Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again
Napalm Death - Utilitarian
Skraeckoedlan - Äppelträdet