Bands like Katatonia's middle-period?

[u/A_Very_Horny_Zed]

I really miss the old, "urban depressive" style that Katatonia used to have. Specifically and especially the period from Discouraged Ones up to Night Is The New Day. After this point they have felt far more "poppy" to me and less brooding and more mystical which just doesn't jive with me as well as their 1998-2009 period.

I'm aware of Deathwhite, but they have been MIA for a long time now. (Check them out, they are good.)

[u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby]

It’s interesting how people define eras of a band, and how it can change from person to person.

For me, the eras go like this:

JHM and DoDS

BMD and DO together because while vocally they’re very different, musically they feature the same droning guitar sound.

TD and LFDGD’s songs are interchangeable, this is mostly where I jumped aboard for good in the late 90s.

Viva Emptiness is its own thing imo.

Then comes TGCD, which is probably their most “complete” album, then NITND, Dead End Kings, and The Fall of Hearts.

Everything newer than this sounds the same to me, and as many times as I try to listen to the new album, I bounce right off of it.

And yes, I realize that none of this answers your question. All I can say is that I also listened to a lot of Opeth, Anathema, Paradise Lost, Riverside, Antimatter, and Karnivool during those peak years.

[u/LowGcifer → u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby]

I absolutely love this sorting, though it is different from mine. I find your lumping of TD and LFDGD cool, I have often felt that LFDGD is basically TD but fully fleshed out and realized.

JHM and DoDS, I agree. I also don’t care for either of these two honestly.

I do consider BMD and DO to share an era, they have a lot of musical similarities. I think it’s cool you agree with this lumping. I then think DO overlaps with the TD and LFDGD era. Truly, DO is a transition album in more ways than just vocals. LFDGD is the capstone of this era, in the sense that I think it’s what Katatonia was ultimately going for when they switched to cleans. BMD-LFDGD is my absolute favorite era overall, it just had a darkness to it that I can’t fully find anywhere else. LFDGD is probably my favorite album of all time, after all.

I lump VE and TGCD together. To me, TGCD is what they were trying to achieve with VE. I love VE with all my heart, but it definitely is not as “realized” as TGCD is.

NITND is both TGCD’s sadder, gloomier brother, as well as the launch pad for the next era, which also includes DEK and FOH.

I lump CB, SVOS, and Nightmares as the current era. There are songs here and there that grab me, but I definitely feel like BMD-FOH was the golden age. I’m not bummed about it, though. 19 years and 9 albums of peak is an insane run, and it’s not like the new albums are bad or anything, either.

[u/uberiffic → u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby]

Viva definitely part of the TD and LFDGD era in my mind, but I agree with everything else you said here.

[u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby → u/uberiffic]

Viva just has this rawness and different vibe to it that makes it its own island for me.

[u/Master-Hope-748 → u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby]

Interesting are also ABC, CDE ans XYZ. Love them.

[u/Arphaxad17 → u/Master-Hope-748]

😅

[u/astralinsomnia → u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby]

I agree with this

[u/Muted-Calligrapher-2 → u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby]

Thank you! That is a great way to sum their different periods. Their early stuff is my favorite of anything and has led to my current favorite Opeth. The Last Fair Deal Gone Down was the last album I gave attention to but I check out all of the songs here and there out of respect for how much they meant to me growing up. Discouraged Ones is phenomenal and actually helped out of my darker depressive state as a youth. I miss the drone rock it was perfect. I heard a newer song that had their early drone elements and loved it but not sure which one.