Katatonia + Victoria K | Live Review | Melbourne | Northcote THeatre | 10th October
Saturday night in Northcote was packed, bustling, and humming with anticipation. Inside the venue, a dedicated crowd had crammed in tight, bracing themselves for a masterclass in melancholy from Swedish heavy metal mainstays Katatonia.
Before the gloom took over, Melbourne’s own gothic metal outfit Victoria K had the honours of warming the room up, and not a second was wasted. Fronted by the immensely talented, and recent The Voice quarter-finalist, Victoria Knight alongside backing vocalist Charlie Curnow, bassist Ethan Colussi, guitarist Dimitri Tsopanian, and drummer James Davies, the band immediately owned the stage. If you’ve followed their trajectory over the last few months like I have, the leap in their live cohesion is staggering. Knight’s soaring highs mesh against Curnow’s gravelly lows with absolute precision, and their collective stage presence hits way above their weight class. Blasting through fan favourites like "Lacuna XXIV" and their crushing cover of Madonna’s "Frozen" alongside recent cuts like "Incubus," "Take It All," and "Oh So Weary," they had the room thoroughly locked in and more than prepped for the Swedish powerhouse to follow.
When the house lights finally dropped, the room shifted instantly. Up at the back, Daniel Moilanen climbed a massive drum riser, practically vanishing behind an intimidating wall of cymbals and haze, but you could feel his weight in the room before he even hit a skin. The rest of the band stalked out of the shadows just as the opening chords of "Thrice" hit the PA. The crowd didn't hesitate, immediately howling the lyrics right back at Jonas Renkse. Age hasn't touched Renkse's voice. He delivered every line with that signature, unbothered posture, letting the sheer, bruising melancholy do all the heavy lifting. Catching a glimpse of Moilanen hiding behind his fortress of tubs was a lost cause all night, but feeling his airtight precision in your chest made up for it.
Katatonia // Photo Credit: Tristan Skell
Momentum only snowballed as they rolled straight into "Birds" and "Rein." Renkse paced the stage with a quiet, coiled intensity, which naturally forced your eyes across the rest of the lineup. Niklas Sandin held down a deep, rumbling low end on bass while guitarists Nico Elgstrand and Sebastian Svalland wove those cascading, glacial atmospheric textures that Katatonia practically own.
By the time "My Twin" and "The Longest Year" dropped, the setlist hit the room like a wave of collective nostalgia. But things really peaked when they slid into "Old Heart Falls" and "July." On the latter, Moilanen’s percussive attack took absolute control. Completely lost in his craft high above the stage, he drove the rhythm section forward with relentless, punishing power. Down on the floor, the crowd finally shed any lingering restraint, giving the band and their elusive, high-perched drummer plenty of moving bodies to look out over as those cathartic, heavy riffs bled out into the Northcote night.
As the final notes faded into the haze and the house lights snapped back on, you could feel the lingering weight of the set hanging thick in the room. Katatonia didn't need flashy stage gimmicks or forced banter to command Northcote. They simply leaned into their own dark, beautiful gravity, leaving a bruised and thoroughly spellbound crowd staggering back out into the cool Melbourne air.