After long day of traveling I finally arrived in Ljubljana at Gala Hala to see show that I have been waiting to see for few years. Band is Katatonia and support bands were Swallow The Sun and Long Distance Calling. The atmosphere infornt of Gala Hala was amazing and you could hear every bands rehearsal outside pretty good so people outside were very happy and excited.
Katatonia formed in 1991 in Stockholm, Sweden and was brought together by long time friends, Anders Nyström and Jonas Renkse . Their older records are now an essential and now classic chapter in the doom metal genre. After that their sound evolved allot so today they sound more progressive and better than ever with allot of energy and effort in their work.
First band that got on stage was Lost Distance Calling. I was very surprised with performance since they have no vocals. Guys did amazing job and the crowd excepted them with allot of clapping and screaming. Every second on stage you could see that they are having really good time. They played only four songs and I’m sorry that they didn’t play The nearing grave, on which song Jonas did the vocal part.
Setlist:
1. Black Paper Planes
2. Fire in the Mountain
3. I Know You, Stanley Milgram!
4. Metulsky Curse Revisited
After a 10 minutes break Swallow the sun got on stage and without any word they just started to play These woods breathe evil and the crowd just went crazy. I think that their facebook status gives you a nice idea : “Thank you Slovenia, it was just as good we hoped for!”. Communication with the crowd after was really great and you could see that even the band was sad to go off the stage. They played one part of the Plague Of Butterflies song and for me that was their highlight since the crowd was in some kind of trance and whole space was filled with some kind of special energy, really amazing.
Setlist:
1. Theese woods breathe evil
2. Falling World
3. These hours of despair
4. Sleepless Swans
5. Don’t fall asleep
6. Plague of Butterflies
7. New Moon
8. Swallow
And finally after long waiting you could hear a funny intro which was the sign that we are going too see something that we have all been waiting for. Katatonia got on stage and all you could hear than was screaming! They played half of the songs from the new album Night is the new day and rest of the songs were like big surprise since they change set list a little before every show. I read on few places that they are boring to live ? It was one of the best performances i ever saw live, you could say they soudned better than on the CD! Comunication between the band and crowd was perfect, everyone was singing and Jonas was happy after every song so it was hard for them to stop playing and go off the stage. Ninetheen played song’s can tell you that! You could really feel they enjoyed the preformance same as everyone that was there. Trully amazing show!
Setlist:
1. Intro
2. Forsaker
3. Liberation
4. My Twin
5. Onward Into Battle
6. Complicity
7. The Longest Year
8. Omerta
9. Teargas
10.Saw You Drown
11. Idle Blood
12. Ghost Of The Sun
13. Evidence
14. Rusted
15. Day and Then the Shade
16. In The White
17. For My Demons
Encore:
18. Dispossession
19. Leaders

Report: Dejan Plantak
Photo: flickr.com