THY CATAFALQUE - XIII: Sárga Erdo 2LP (WINTER LAKE) (Preorder)

NB! Preorder item, release November 20.

THY CATAFALQUE is the solo-helmed Hungarian avant-garde metal project of Tamás Kátai, running since 1998 and now a two-time Fonogram (Hungarian Grammy) winner. What began as a studio-only outlet has grown, over the past few years, into a full international touring act with festival slots across Europe and Latin America.
'XIII: Sárga erdo' is THY CATAFALQUE's thirteenth album, and unlike its predecessors it carries no single narrative thread: the twelve tracks move instead through what plays like a wandering across old ground, touching on loss, distance, memory and disappearance without ever settling on one story. The record marks a real shift in how it's built: this is the first time THY CATAFALQUE has used a live drummer rather than programmed rhythm, and while the cast is enormous - thirty-four musicians plus a twenty-voice male choir - the folk and classical textures that once flooded every corner of a song (piano, strings, brass, reed, sitar, kamancheh, zither) are used here with real discipline, brought in only when a track calls for them. The result sits closer to the bone than the maximalism of the last record, heavier in restraint than in volume, and it still finds room for a fictitious folk song built for a vanished people on the Volga, an incineration metaphor turned into the album's heaviest cut, and an opener that reads like a farewell letter.
Gábor Vári returns behind the desk for a second record running, keeping the production language consistent even as the arrangements pull back.

For fans of IHSAHN, DØDHEIMSGARD, MUZSIKÁS.
Cover photography by Laszlo Horvath.

Winter lake (blue, crystal and black splatter) 12" double vinyl (33 rpm) in gatefold.
Limited to 300 copies worldwide!.

Season Of Mist 2026