The Fall of Hearts

Background and recording

The album is their first in four years, after their 2012 album Dead End Kings. In between albums, the band went through two lineup changes, making the album their first to feature new drummer Daniel Moilanen and new guitarist Roger Öjersson. Moilanen replaced the band's prior drummer of fifteen years Daniel Liljekvist, who left in 2014 to focus on family and pursue a more conventional career outside of music. The band mutually decided to part ways with guitarist Per Erikkson, prior guitarist of four years, in 2014 as well; his move to Barcelona complicated the band's recording and touring schedule.

Despite the lineup changes, the album was still primarily written by founding members Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström.

Themes and composition

The album's overall sound has been described by journalists as progressive rock, with various other influences. Loudwire compared the track "Serein" to 1980's new wave music such as The Cure, due to its "gentle strumming and a soft lead... Jonas Renkse’s soothing, multi-tracked voice... a slightly uptempo rhythm [...] uplifting and pop-inflected [...] gorgeous, understated lead work textures." The inclusion of the technically proficient guitar playing of Öjersson led to the inclusion of more guitar solos on the album.

Release and promotion

The album was released on May 20, 2016. Two singles have been released, along with lyric videos, for the tracks "Old Hearts Fall" on March 30, and "Serein" on May 10. For the "Old Hearts Fall" lyric video, the band actually wrote out the lyrics with an old typewriter, to help give an extra feeling of melancholy to the video, and implemented it into the video with assistant from video editor Lasse Hoile.

Shortly after release, the band will tour in support of the album, first focusing on playing festivals such as Hellfest and Tuska, and then moving on to touring across South America starting August 2016, and an extensive tour across Europe afterwards.

Reception

The Fall of Hearts was met with positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, a review aggregator site which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 from music critics, the album has received a score of 72/100, based on 4 critics, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". AllMusic reviewer Thom Jurek praised the band for moving into an even more progressive direction, concluding that "Their lyrics remain steeped in themes of loss, alienation, desolation, and the desire for transcendence, but their melodies are more labyrinthine, less straight-ahead, and conversely, contain more earworm hooks, making them more accessible to a wider prog rock audience than ever before. Inspiring and forward-looking, this album proves that at 25, Katatonia are still restless and refuse to rest on their laurels." Chad Bowar of Loudwire similarly praised the band's progression from the death metal of their past to more of a progressive rock sound, comparing them to contemporaries Opeth and concluding "They are veterans and know exactly what they want, and their singular vision is not distorted by any outside influences. The Fall of Hearts is full of both darkness and light, heaviness and softness, drama and understatement. It’s an album that is intricate with a lot of subtleties, but also a lot of accessibility.