For Funerals to Come

Personnel: Blackheim (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Jonas Renkse (vocals, drums).
Recording information: Unisound Studio (06/1994); Unisound Studio (09/1994).
Katatonia's first recording for new label AvantGarde was 1995's For Funerals to Come.... EP, which found the ever more confident Swedes now capable of knocking out desolate doom/death anthems quite effortlessly. To wit, the opening colossus that is "Funeral Wedding" doesn't even feel like it lasts all of eight minutes, and the comparatively brief "Shades of Emerald Lies" is perhaps even more complex in terms of shifting tempos and riffs -- all of them invariably embellished by gloriously bleak and morose lyrics. In turn, the two-minute title track is achingly gorgeous in its simplicity, its whispered words of unfathomable grief making way to the basic instrumental "Epistle," to bring yet another fine Katatonia EP to a close. [For Funerals to Come... was later included in 2004's Brave Yester Days collection.] ~ Eduardo Rivadavia