KATAGORY V: In Pre-Production Mode

Utah-based progressive/power metallers KATAGORY V have completed the writing process for their as-yet-untitled fourth album (the follow-up to the recently released "The Rising Anger"). Bassist and co-founder Dustin Mitchell had this to say about the progress:

"We started the writing process on this next album around February of this year, and have made it a priority to get this one done in a more reasonable amount of time. Being that the last two albums seemed to have taken nearly three years, from writing them to putting it out on in stores; that is far too long between albums for us... not to mention for our fans. This is why we have not played as many live shows this year; we've been spending many long hours in rehearsal, working out all the song arrangements on these new songs with extreme scrutiny. At this time, all the songs are complete, along with lyrics and we are working on the finishing touches with the arrangements, vocals and guitar melodies, and will be tracking rough demos while going over them again and again until everything sounds 100%. We are shooting for late January or early February to record the new album.

"The reason we're doing it this way, is that we plan on recording this album live, which is something we have not done before. In the past, we have gone through and tracked each instrument separately over the course of a few months, but this time, we will be doing it live and hope to have it wrapped up in a few weeks! One of the other reasons we want to do this, is that we want to capture as much of the live energy and sound as we can, being that many fans have told us that our music translates much more aggressively live rather than on recording, so we want to see if we can also capture that type of energy on tape."

When asked about the direction of the next album and what the expected time frame for release would be, Dustin said, "In my opinion, the material for this next album is sounding more melodic vocally than 'The Rising Anger', with more hooks, but also much darker in the overall sound and feel with more of our thrash metal influences coming out. We have been experimenting with different tunings as well, which is something we normally haven't done in the past, and it's opened up some pretty interesting ideas and sounds.

"I can't really say when the album will be out, because that's looking a bit too far ahead. However, I can tell you that we'd really like to see it out there no later than late summer or early fall 2007, barring all things go well. We'll obviously keep you all posted on the progress!"

Some of the songtitles set to appear on their upcoming fourth album are "The Workforce", "Lies and Illusions", "Listen to you (Listen to Me)", "Apologetic Heart" as well as "Kings of the Valley", which was the song that that was debuted at the recent live show in Las Vegas, NV while supporting LEATHERWOLF. This will be KATAGORY V's fourth album, following the recently released "The Rising Anger" which came out in late May of this year on Nightmare Records.