Swedish dark rockers KATATONIA recently entered the studio to begin recording their ninth album, to be released later in the year.

A new video update from studio can be seen at this location.

KATATONIA previously stated about the band’s new material, “Well, you got the lush textures, the moody melodies, the heavy parts, the progressive touches, the mellow bits and so on… Is it metal? Is it rock? Is it alternative? Is it singer/songwriter? Actually at times it feels like we’re exploring territories where KATATONIA would be an orphan in the land of ‘genres.’ We can’t tell where and to whom we belong and the goal is that it doesn’t even matter, because before and above any genre, there’s first an acceptance level of music being good, or being bad. KATATONIA might be bad people, but we create good music.”

The group added, “We also hooked up again with keyboard maestro extraordinaire Frank Default and regardless of the Internet speculations, he’s not to ‘blame’ for the increased use of electronics since the last album. That part has been called for as we simply feel that it has grown to fill a hole in our sound inside, or alongside, the classic formation of instruments. In our world, we allow mellotrones, Hammonds, rhodes and strings to integrate with loops, distortion and filters to manifest in the katatonic maelstrom. It’s our time to marry contemporary with vintage.”

KATATONIA played four shows in Scandinavia in December, hitting the capital cites of Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki and, of course, the band’s hometown of Stockholm. The concerts, which were part of the 20th-anniversary “Last Fair Day Gone Night Tour 2011”, saw the band perform two sets. The first set consisted of a performance of the entire “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” album front to back. The second set was a mixture of carefully picked songs from the band’s extensive catalogue.

KATATONIA’s May 6, 2011 concert at Koko in London, England was professionally filmed/recorded for a future DVD release.

Source: www.blabbermouth.net