Review by Adam M on April 29, 2015.

Katatonia has a large collection of morose songs to choose from for a live event. They have a nice selection of songs here that focuses more on the band’s later output since it the most subtle of their material and most conducive to this type of an environment. The result is a gentle collection of songs that complements the more alternative sounding songs from Katatonia’s full length releases.

The middle period of the band that is my favourite, revolving around Last Fair Deal Gone Down and Viva Emptiness, is reasonably represented here. However, the band also does perform a few tracks from their recent album Dead End Kings. What I’m suggesting is that the songs choices could be more evenly dispersed. Despite this, there is plenty of variety on display throughout Sanctitude. What I’m even more impressed by is musical performances on the album. The guitar work is mellow, but emotive sounding. Jonas Renske’s vocals are just as poignant and effective as on their studio recordings. In fact, I’m most impressed by singing over any other element from this recording. Katatonia successfully does justice to their studio counterpart albums better than many other bands.

As such, Sanctitude is successful as a live recording and will be appreciated highly by fans of the outfit. The problem I have with this effort is partially that Katatonia should be focusing more of their powers on crafting superior full length releases in the future. I still prefer recent Anathema and Paradise Lost to what new material Katatonia has provided recently, but I fully believe this band has enough power to overtake either of those bands. As it stands this should hold over fans of Katatonia until their next full-length release sees the light of day. The quality and quantity of songs found here is still impressive, however.

Rating: 8 out of 10