If Lord Seth only knew what he was setting in motion when he began penning the words for “Dance Of December Souls” so very long ago.

So this might shock some of the younger Metal fans out there but today is the 20th Anniversary of the debut album by Katatonia; a crushing, Doom-laden piece of Atmospheric Melancholy that snares you upon your first listen. The band was only three members in the proper lineup at this time with Blackheim (Anders Nystrom) on electric/acoustic guitars, Lord Seth (Jonas Renkse) on drums, percussion and voices, and Israphel Wing (Guillaume Le Huche) on bass. The keyboards were delivered by a session musician Day DiSyraah. Now I will admit that I would not find myself exposed to this band for a very long time and several albums later and I guess one of the primary reasons was based on 1993 being a very different geography for music (especially Metal) here in the United States. Our local region record stores (yes there were still plenty of those at the time) we stocked in full with the Grunge movement stuff and the debut by Radiohead but this kind of Metal was not going to be too easy to chance upon. Remember also that the World Wide Web was still only building as far as the public was concerned so your chance of discovering this kind of music as an early adopter was on the limited side. You would be most successful if you had friends from the country where the band came from who were letting you know about it or by digging deep into a European Metal magazine like Kerrang!!!
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