Both bands’ relationships with our country have taken very divergent paths, however. While Opeth have been here many, many times over the past ten years or so, Katatonia have been here only once in their 20+ year career, and never on their own headlining tour. Singer Jonas Renske, speaking from his home in Stockholm, Sweden, is a little puzzled as to why this is the case, and why they have never jumped on one of Opeth’s many tours of Australia before now.
“We’re really good friends with them, and have been for many years,” he says. “The music is a great match, touring wise. Our music isn’t so different from what Opeth’s doing, both bands operate in the same kind of style. It’s a shame [Katatonia haven’t been to Australia with Opeth before]. Every time they go over, we think, ‘Oh, we should have been on that tour’, you know?”
However that’s all about to change, as it was recently announced Katatonia would finally be doing an Aussie tour opening for Opeth. The tour reaches our shores this week and Renske couldn’t be happier, especially since he feels they will be playing to a more appropriate crowd than on their last trip here.
“Yep, finally it’s happening, so I shouldn’t complain any more. We feel great about coming to Australia,” he enthuses. “It’s been a couple of years, and the last thing we did in Australia, which was our first tour there, was a little bit different. It was the festival tour with a lot of bands that were not most of Katatonia’s crowd’s favourite bands. It was fun, we had a great time, but this time it’s going to be a little bit different. It’s just more of our own territory, playing proper venues instead of festivals. And hopefully this is a good sign that we can come over more often.”
With such a vast back catalogue of quality albums behind them, creating a setlist is not always the easiest task. “When we’re doing a support tour like this, we have a limited playing time which makes it even more difficult. It’s a delicate problem, it’s difficult but it’s fun because it makes you think of all the songs that we’ve done, and which songs have got the best reception in a live situation, and you just take it from there. You think about what people usually like and then try to give them what they want.”
And as per usual, their current tour’s setlist is going to be slanted reasonably heavily towards the band’s latest album Dead End Kings, which was released around six months ago. “The new album is still something that we’re promoting,” he says. “So there’s going to be maybe three or four songs from it. But at the same time, since we’re in Australia, we’ll try to make a varied setlist and not just go for the new songs, because I think a lot of people have been waiting for us to play in this kind of environment.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
