Thy Catafalque is an

avant-garde metal Avant-garde metal (also known as avant-metal, experimental metal, art metal and experimetal) is a subgenre of heavy metal music loosely defined by use of experimentation and innovative, avant-garde music, avant-garde elements, including non-stan ...

band formed in

Makó Makó (, , Makowe, or , ) is a town in Csongrád County, in southeastern Hungary, from the Romanian border. It lies on the Maros River. Makó is home to 21,913 people and it has an area of , of which is arable land. Makó is the fourth-larges ...

, Hungary, with its activities extending to

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, Scotland, reflecting the movements of its founder.

History

The band was formed by Hungarian musician Tamás Kátai, along with a bandmate from a previous group, Gort. In their early years, the band started off as an "Avantgarde post-black metal project". As time progressed, the band left most of their traditional black metal influences behind for an "extreme variety of songs" in their 2004 album, '' Tűnő Idő Tárlat''. In February 2009, the band was signed to the avant-garde

independent record label An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small and medium-sized enterprise, small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels ...

Epidemie Records. They have had a number of guest musicians over the years, including vocals by Ágnes Tóth of neo-folk duo The Moon and the Nightspirit. In 2009, they released their concept album '' Róka Hasa Rádió'', about "the relationship between the ever evolving, solid and massive physical matter and the fragileness of humans and all living spirits, throughout distant childhood memories and scientific explanations of nature. Revolving, rotating movements of past and future, colours, sounds, long lost scents by a strange transmission from a timeless radio." It features a mix of atmospheric instrumental music, Hungarian folk elements and traditional black metal, making it very experimental. The album narrowly missed the winner's place in the 2009 HangSúly Hungarian Metal Awards, which was won by Dalriada. In 2011 the band signed to Season of Mist. Their fifth album entitled '' Rengeteg'' released in 2011, was the first Thy Catafalque album written and recorded by Tamás Kátai alone without János Juhász, who did not contribute to the recording this time. ''Sgùrr'' was next released in 2015. In 2020, the band released the ''Zápor'' EP via GS Productions on CD and via Casus Belli Musica and Beverina Productions in vinyl. Kátai originally intended the band as a studio-only project, but a number of musicians who were eager to hear Thy Catafalque songs played live reached out to him in 2021 to suggest a live performance with a revolving door of musicians; this eventually took place at the Fekete Zaj festival in Sástó, Hungary; Kátai himself played took part on bass on a few songs. The performance was released as a live album called '' Mezolit - Live at Fekete Zaj''.

Tamás Kátai

During the 2010s Kátai used to reside in

. Beside his musical career, he has also worked as English teacher and as a professional language interpreter for

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

. By the 2020s, he moved back to Hungary.

Members

* Tamás Kátai –

vocals Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define sing ...

, keyboards/

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

, programming

Former members

* János Juhász – guitar, bass guitar (1998–2011)

''Mezolit'' live performance

* Gábor Dudás - vocals * Lambert Lédeczy - vocals * Gyula Vasvári - vocals * Martina Veronika Horváth - vocals * Ivett Dudás - vocals * Ádám Forczek - vocals * András Nagy - vocals * Bálint Bokodi - vocals * András Vörös - vocals * Zoltán Vigh - guitar * Antal Mór Szűcs - guitar * Gábor Vári - guitar * Zoltán Kónya - guitar * Botond Fogl - guitar * Dániel Szabó - guitar * Krisztián Varga - guitar * Péter Erdélyi - guitar * Rajmund Katona - bass * Tamás Kátai - bass, vocals * György Kantár - bass * Gergely Cseh - bass * Michaela Bos - cello * József Kun - drums * Árpád Szenti - drums * Márk Potkovácz - drums * Tadeusz Rieckmann - drums

Discography

Studio Albums

* '' Sublunary Tragedies'' (1999, KaOtic Productions / GS Productions) * Microcosmos (2001, KaOtic Productions / GS Productions) * '' Tűnő Idő Tárlat'' (2004, Epidemie Records / Blood Music / GS Productions) * '' Róka Hasa Rádió'' (2009, Epidemie Records / Soyuz Music / GS Productions) * '' Rengeteg'' (2011, Season of Mist / Blood Music) * '' Sgùrr'' (2015, Season of Mist) * ''Meta'' (2016, Season of Mist) * '' Geometria'' (2018, Season of Mist) * '' Naiv'' (2020, Season of Mist / Kattran Records / Symbol of Domination Productions) * '' Vadak'' (2021, Season of Mist) * '' Alföld'' (2023, Season of Mist) * '' XII: A gyönyörű álmok ezután jönnek'' (2024, Season of Mist)

Compilations

* ''The Early Works'' (2015, Blood Music) * ''Köd Utánam'' oxset(2020, GS Productions)

Live Albums

* '' Mezolit (Live at Fekete Zaj)'' (2022, Season of Mist)

EPs

* '' Zápor'' (2020, GS Productions / Casus Belli Musica / Beverina Productions)

Demos

* ''Cor Cordium'' (1999)

References

External links

Official website

Season Of Mist

Thy Catafalque info sheet at Metal-archives

Thy Catafalque
on

Myspace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

*Treppel J. Meta. Outburn: Subversive & Post Alternative. 2016;(86):67. Accessed May 4, 2025. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=118457188&site=eds-live&scope=site Avant-garde metal musical groups Beverina Productions artists Casus Belli Musica artists Hungarian black metal musical groups Hungarian heavy metal musical groups Hungarian musical duos One-man bands Musical groups established in 1998 Season of Mist artists Symphonic black metal musical groups {{metal-music-stub