Swedish alternative metal outfit We Are The Catalyst premiere their new single/video today on Tattoo. It’s called “Predators,” the first single from the band’s forthcoming album Ephemeral, slated to drop via Ferocity Records in early 2019.
The band describes the opaque pressure of “Predators,” saying, “With this song we wanted to go darker and heavier than we have before, adding an uncomfortable air to our sound. “Predators” is a song about decadence, striving for fame just for fame, climbing to the top over bodies, and also about having blind faith in various forms, be it religion or idolizing actors, musicians etc. From the lyrics – “Your love embrace/Our empty faith/A simple phrase/ And you will praise,” criticizing how easy people follow others that they believe have all the answers without questioning, and how they are almost making gods out of famous people for no reason other than them being famous.”
Made up of Cat Fey (vocals), Kenny Boufadene (guitar, vocals), Hakan Strind (drums), and Joni Kaartinen (bass), We Are The Catalyst formed in 2012, dropping their debut EP, Panem Et Circenses, in 2013. In October 2014, they dropped their debut album, Monuments, on Ferocity Records, followed by Elevation, in 2016. Elevation intensified the band’s sound, incorporating dense, hefty energy, while preserving their proprietary melodicism.
We Are The Catalyst has toured China, performing at the Sound of the Xity music expo in Beijing, and the Strawberry Festival in Shanghai. They played Bloodstock Open Air with Trivium, Sabaton, and Within Temptation, and opened for Delain on their UK tour, followed by headlining their own UK tour.
We Are The Catalyst’s sound has been described as alternative metal, emo rock, metalcore, electronic rock, pop metal, and dark rock. Whatever term you choose to use, the band’s sound revolves around nuclear-fueled muscularity attended by elegant melodic spellbinding vocals.
“Predators” opens with a dark hypertrophic guitars sending out a bulldozing wall-of-sound, a chilling pressure bearing down like the hand of a god. The rhythm, potently intoxicating, resembles the movement of the cosmos, gravitational and inexorable.
Fey’s voice, wickedly elegant and graceful, is both buff and gorgeously evocative. Like a sonic delicious plague, it infects her listeners with proximate texture and imminent colors. This is a grand, superlative voice capable of compelling sonority and expression. The amalgamation of hellishly throbbing guitars and Fey’s delectable melodic tones infuses the tune with ineffable dynamism.
Halfway through the song, a delicate harmonic interruption breaks the song’s surging force, sparkling with burnished fluidity, like a channel composed of sonic ripples, prior to exploding into hurricane-like concentration.
“Predators” is absolutely marvelous. The crush of sound is prodigious yet sophisticated, while Fey’s engulfing melodious tones mold the flow of the music.
