Some superstitious folk would look very askance at this, Katatonia's thirteenth full-length album and the first from the Swedish gloom institution since the departure of founding member Anders Nyström earlier this year. He had seemed mentally checked out for years, leading for some to call the last couple of releases from the band Jonas Renkse solo albums - indeed, City Burials was apparently intended as just that. And although Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State largely seems to be Renkse' creature, it does also noticeably carry on from the past couple of releases in a way that makes it another step on this singular band's path rather than an outlier. Katatonia have carried on manfully since Nyström's departure, replacing him with dual guitarists Nico Elgstrand (ex-Entombed AD) and Sebastian Svalland (live for Hypocrisy, ex-In Mourning) and although Nightmares... lacks the intensity and inspiration of recent glories such as Dead End Kings, the good news is that it provides just enough of the band's modern formula to at least be worth hearing for fans.

There the good news ends because this feels like an abandoned attempt at making something strange and experimental, such efforts rarely working as effectively as they could. Opener Thrice is in some ways very typical for modern Katatonia with its post-Tool-esque instrumental flourishes yet the instrumental passage on this song is extended far longer than it needed to be with the vocals taking on more of an invocatory feel throughout. Wind of No Change's choirs heralds an interesting step sideways, as does the "hail Satan" lyrical lines, even if the rest is a little too languid. That's something of an album calling card, sadly; tracks either seem strangely experimental or boring to the point of forgettability. The Liquid Eye and Lilac are early tracklisting examples of the latter, pleasant enough to listen to in the moment but lacking any memorability whatsoever. And although Departure Trails has a gentler, proggier approach to the Katatonia formula and performs it well enough, there's barely enough meat on the bone or life to the execution to warrant inclusion.

At worst, the songs here feel lacking in energy to the point of listlessness, shades of past glories emerging but not sticking around - The Light Which I Bleed, for instance. At best, you can hear some attempt at something different, even if that's not within the band's usual wheelhouse. Efter Solen is the prime example of this in the latter half of the tracklisting, a fragile, synth-driven Swedish language ballad that seems to come from a different album if not a different universe entirely in which Katatonia play some kind of Sigur Rós post-rock! It would be an interesting new direction for the band, yet here merely feels like a strange interlude before final piece In the Event of, which returns to the band's usual prog/alt rock terrain with perhaps a touch more yearning spirituality in its vibes than much of the soulless surroundings. All in all, this remains comfortably the least enticing Katatonia album to date and something of a disappointment even after City Burials and Sky Void of Stars reduced our expectations considerably. As a lover of the band who cherishes much of their discography it's no pleasure to be unable to recommend this; hopefully Renkse can only proceed upwards from here, not to mention whatever the former Blackheim ends up producing now he is set free. Bands rarely produce their best work once their founding members have departed but it would be a delight if Renkse and Nyström individually manage to prove that wrong in the future.