Brave Yester Days

Katatonia | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 4, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Century Media
• ASIN: B000228ENQ
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,667 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Midwinter Gates (Prologue)

2. Without God

3. Palace Frost

4. The Northern Silence

5. Crimson Tears (Epilogue)

6. Gateways of Bereavement

7. Velvet Thorns (Of Drynwhyl)

8. Black Erotica

9. Love of the Swan

10. Funeral Wedding

See all 13 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Murder

2. Rainroom

3. Nowhere

4. At Last

5. Inside the Fall

6. Untrue

7. Nerve

8. Saw You Drown

9. Quiet World

10. Scarlet Heavens

Editorial Reviews

Two disc compilation album for the influential metal act includes their long sold-out mini CDs, their old demo, a few lost compilation songs, one completely unreleased song, & of course bits from their first three albums. Packaged in a double digipak with --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent retrospective - all fans should pick this up, September 4, 2004

By 

S. Flask (the Pequod) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brave Yester Days (Audio CD)

since there's not much info here on what this IS, here you go... this two disc set contains:

Disc 1:

Jhva Elohim Meth -- Entire EP, five tracks, 1992
Dance of December Souls -- two tracks from LP, 1993
War Compilation Vol. 1 -- two tracks, 1994
For Funerals to Come -- Entire EP, four tracks, 1994

Disc 2:

Brave Murder Day -- two tracks from LP, 1996
Sounds of Decay -- Entire EP, four tracks, 1997
Saw You Drown -- Entire EP, four tracks, 1997

I'm not sure, but the liner notes indicate that this was 'mastered'... so I'm not sure if it's remastered, but the sound quality is good from start to finish, and it flows - which can often be a problem with compilations - so no complaints there. The price is also right, giving you a ton of out of print material on two discs for the price of a single disc.

The music? Well, as you can see by the dates above, everything on here was recorded before 1998's Discouraged Ones, so a lot of it doesn't have the clean vocal parts you might be used to. (although the material towards the end *does*) Opeth's M. Akerfeldt (sorry if i'm misspelling) does an excellent job with his vocal parts, and fans of his work should be excited to hear this material.

If you've hesitated in picking up older Katatonia material because of the death/black vocal stylings, there is a great way to get a taste of what they offer from that period, and I think what you'll find is that the music still offers the same great atmosphere of the "newer" material, without ever coming off as just being some cliche black doom.

This isn't just a cash in either... the material is excellent, it's a great introduction to the first part of this band's career, and it's a great value. Fans of their newer stuff should get this immediately to see what they've been missing, and fans of the older LP's who can't get their hands on the out of print EP's will want to get this too.

Another quality disc to file under the Katatonia name.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for any fan., September 11, 2004

By 

IcemanJ (Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Brave Yester Days (Audio CD)

This is a great compilation of the band's now mostly unavailable EP's. For fans like me, who got into the band fairly recently and still want to collect everything, this is perfect. It is mostly older material, similar to "Brave Murder Day," which I like better then their newer material. This includes the following EPs in their entirety, which are probably all out of print: "Jhva Elohim Meth," "For Funerals to Come," "Sounds of Decay," and "Saw you Drown," also 2 tracks from "War Compilation Vol. 1"... apparently some compilation they contributed to. It also includes some tracks from full albums also, "Dance of December Souls," which might be very hard to find, (but only includes 2 out of 8 tracks) and "Brave Murder Day"... which shouldn't be that hard to find, I don't think. But that also includes only 2 of 6 tracks.

The first EP is "Jhva Elohim Meth," I'm assuming is their very first, and is very good. It includes an early version of "Without God" later found on "Dance of December Souls," and the epilogue is cool sounding :) The War Compilation includes "Black Erotica" which is an earlier version of "12" from Brave Murder Day, and "Love of the Swan" which is also very good. The whole EP "For Funerals to Come" is amazing and an absolutely essential part of this band, except the last song which is some weird experimentation. "Sounds of Decay" on disc 2 is almost the same case. "Nerve" and "Saw you Drown" can be heard on "Discouraged Ones" and both are excellent songs, "Saw you Drown" being one of my top favorite Katatonia songs. The last two songs were only on the EP, "Quiet World" is very mellow, but keeping the same mood as the rest of Discouraged Ones, and "Scarlet Heavens" is over 10 minutes and also very good of course, nothing on here isn't.

I don't really think this is a great way for fans to discover the band, except maybe for the song "Saw You Drown" and the songs on Brave Murder Day and For Funerals to Come, other than that, it kind of should be the last thing you buy after all their full length albums, as it is a collection of out of print things. I might be wrong though. All I know is I've been listening to it a lot since I got it; it's a great collection and really needed to be done.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Depressing Doom/goth metal, May 14, 2004

By 

progpatron01 "progpatron01" (mn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brave Yester Days (Audio CD)

This is a great display of katatonia's career, and progression as a band. The earlyer stuff was black/doom, slow dark, and haunting. The later material is progressive goth/doom, very very good. Plus theres about 5 tracks with mikeal akerfeldt from opeth on it. This is an amazing collection, i definetly recommend it.