Review Summary: Tamás Kátai discovers new ways of keeping his unique musical vision fresh and exciting, whilst providing a less immediate opus for fans of avant-garde metal to enjoy.
With
Meta, Tamás Kátai demonstrated that he could combine several conflicting styles of music in such a unique way that virtually no other band sounded like Thy Catafalque. Of course, he was helped by a slew of guest musicians, but at the heart of it all was this organic, fluent and very daring songwriting which constantly tested the limits of extreme metal. With this year's
Geometria, the statement of intent is still exactly the same. The music, certainly isn't. You know it's going to be quite an experimental effort when opening song "Hajnali csillag" is devoid of any sort of heaviness and instead relies on ethereal female vocals, dark ambient-influenced synthesisers and organic violin work for over eight minutes. It shouldn't come as a surprise however, especially to those who know what Thy Catafalque have been capable of in the past, albums such as
Róka hasa rádió and the aforementioned
Meta proving the project's worth in a sub-genre riddled with questionable musical direction.
Yet even compared to these two past releases,
Geometria is still a very different beast. The seeds for a different creation altogether are already sown with that unsettling albeit distant-sounding opener, yet with second track "Szamojéd freskó" the return to a heavier, organic underlying rhythm thankfully confines the listener to more familiar musical territory. Whilst the heavier, more extreme elements are in even shorter supply on this album than in the past, you can tell that Tamás has organized these contrasting styles to provide food for thought rather than jagged transitions and hesitant attempts at avant-garde mannerisms. Instead, each song grows from one point to another, despite the obvious versatility suggesting otherwise. Take the seemingly bizarre transition from "Szamojéd freskó" to electronica-inspired "Töltés" for example. Whilst the former is arguably one of the heaviest and most menacing Thy Catafalque songs to date, the latter turns this experience on its head and revels in a sound completely rooted in EDM and neoclassical darkwave territory. Synthesisers and female guest vocals abound, the electronica elements of "Töltés" prove daring and continue to manipulate our expectations of how far Tamás is willing to take his musical experimentation.
Versatile and head-scratching as this effort may be, Tamás' penchant for creating music which invokes deep emotional fervour and atmospheric wonder certainly hasn't changed. As said before, never in
Geomteria do you get the feeling that the mainman behind Thy Catafalque is clutching at straws to make something different. As with
Meta, Tamás manages to successfully develop consistency and harmony in every song, with little to no sign of his creativity waning. "Hajnali csillag" and "Sárember" are perhaps the best examples of this. Both songs naturally take in conflicting influences into their sound, but they are both united in that there's always this fluent, organic underlying groove to get the heart pacing and the mind expanding. The former simply builds and builds into ever more expansive musical territory, but maintains that dark ambient focus throughout, whereas the latter is much more immediate in its delivery and certainly proves to be amongst the heaviest songs in Thy Catafalque's cannon.
What is most obvious to those who have listened to Thy Catafalque's previous records is the change in song length. Eyebrows will be raised when you learn that no song on
Geometria exceeds the eight-minute mark, especially since
Meta really explored lengthier runtimes and for that reason demonstrated a clear focus on epic, progressive passages. Here, the runtimes tend to last between three and six minutes apiece (save for the opener and closer lasting eight minutes each), but as said before, are vastly different thanks to the high level of versatility. Unfortunately this also points towards the album's only outstanding flaw. Whereas songs such as "Sarémber" and "Hajnall csillag" were clearly written as progressive piece of work, a few of the shorter songs like "Hajó" and "SÃ*k" render themselves slightly forgettable. Perhaps it's the way in which they simply roll out simplistic melodies and garner no further steps into avant-garde territory, but when they're surrounded by other songs which are clearly more consistent and daring, it's hard to think of them as anything more than filler material. That said, the generally shorter length of these songs is experimental in itself, further satisfying Tamás' willingness to explore different ways of composition and songwriting.
Geometria clearly demonstrates itself as an album which will please only those who are used to Thy Catafalque's unique and multi-dimensional style, but still requires multiple listens for a proper judgement. Whether or not you can take an album with such a high level of versatility at first glance is up to you, but there is a gargantuan amount of proof here that Tamás Kátai is certainly one of the frontrunners for avant-garde metal.
