October Tide “Grey Dawn” CD

Continuing in the vein of the last post, as the finest month of the autumn season has just begun, here's another band that's perfect for this time of year. October Tide was formed in the late-90's by Jonas Renkse and Fredrik Norrman from the almighty Katatonia. They released October Tide's debut, "Rain Without End", as a duo in 1997, somewhat ironically right around the time when Katatonia was first starting to branch out and morph into their current state—whereas October Tide sounds quite similar to the classic Katatonia of old. This is especially evident on the band's second and final full-length, 1999's "Grey Dawn", on which Mårten Hansen performed vocals. The end result sounds arguably identical to the sort of sound that Katatonia delivered on "Brave Murder Day", though perhaps with an added air of Paradise Lost circa "Shades of God". Those moody midpaced chord progressions, somber lead melodies, and depressive atmospheric undercurrents are all in place:

I learn from this life to hide from humanity, and night has told me how to kill my anxiety. The ghost of my smile dances in the pale, and I know all my efforts most likely will fail...

Sadly both October Tide albums are extremely hard to come by these days, and I myself have never been able to score a copy of "Rain Without End"—which I've never even been fortunate enough to hear. As amazing and well appreciated as Katatonia is (and with the significant number of collections/reissues they've been bestowed), it makes absolutely no fucking sense to me that neither of these CD's has been re-released, and it honestly makes me quite angry considering the demand. Of course, hell, if you ask me, a brand new October Tide record would also be quite nice, but realistically speaking, there's simply no reason why these two albums should be so painfully rare. They almost never even show up on eBay (where a copy of the debut went for an absurd $100+ last month). Come on, someone step up and get these fucking things back out there...

And note: You can also download another song from this record at Darkdose right now. I'm not at all surprised, but hadn't yet noticed that they had posted about this exact same album just two days before me, ha!