Katatonia recently released their new album City Burials, their first since they came back from a short hiatus. The album has been extremely well-received thus far, though Katatonia can't do a lick of touring to support it. Katatonia vocalist Jonas Renkse told the MetalSucks Quarantine Podcast that the quarantine has been difficult and that a lack of touring threatens the existence of the band. Renkse also jokes (half-joking) that he might have to get a "real job" if things don't get better.
“Well, it’s difficult for me to fathom the whole thing right now. We’re so used to everything just going on as normal and everything being alright. So now when we start to see the bigger scale of things, it’s kind of overwhelming.
“Of course this will affect our band in many ways. Not being able to tour, to play gigs, we have to kind of rely on album sales which we all know is not really what any musician would rely on these days.
“I don’t know man, we have to wait and see. In a year’s time if we can go back to touring, I hope we’re still a band. Otherwise we just have to… I don’t know, I have to learn… I’ll have to get a real job.” [laughs]
“I think [the band] has been our income for at least ten years back, so to stop doing this now is going to be a big blow to our little universe that we have created and that we’ve been able to live off. We’ve not been rich from it but we can pay the bills and we love touring, we love to go out there and represent the albums that we have made.
“Right now it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen and it’s hard to even visualize the whole scenario in a couple of months from now. It could be very different.”
See? This is why we need a vaccine! Katatonia can't break up!
