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.
Tracklist:
Side A: Búcsú a piros madártól / Ég-anyám, föld-apám / Dunnák alatt kék mezo
Side B: Szitaköto / Suhamló éji fák / Puszta / Sirató
Side C: Cseremisz / Sárga erdo
Side D: Tömbök / Kút vizén nap forog / 87 tavasz, 87 osz
This item is available for pre-order. It will be available on 11/20/2026.
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