✦✦✦✧ More settled than the 2020 predecessor City Burials, this album is surefooted, dynamic, and above all else, hauntingly emotive. So the band is less and less progressive with each album. And sure, it sounds like they’ve taken another step closer toward being Leprous (but that’s not much of a tragedy).

✦✦✦✧ Somehow, this is both Katatonia at their most pop-oriented… and their most moodiest album since Dead End Kings. The production by Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström is as lush and appropriate as ever, with a heightened focus on atmosphere and songwriting. Special shout out to lead single “Lacquer,” which uses electronica in a new (to this band) way to convey something unique, accessible, but oh so doomed.

✦✦✧✧ The newest incarnation of Katatonia begs a few comparisons to Opeth (“Damnation,” anyone?). More pointedly, any vestiges of metal on this album are largely relegated to the status of ornamentation in service to a pervasively gothy form of prog. Look: props definitely due for the band burrowing deeper into their softer side.