THY CATAFALQUE, the Hungarian avant-garde metal project of Tamás Kátai, release new single and music video “Tömbök” (“Masses”) today, the second single from XIII: Sárga erdő, the band’s thirteenth album, out November 20th via Season of Mist.
Watch the video for Tömbök: https://youtu.be/TPx14dmjN9A
“Tömbök” stays inside the furnace. Its lyrics follow matter through a boiler chamber, where glowing walls divide it into slag and heat, and on to the silos and heaps where the slag cools into lifeless blocks. Against that, a refrain that works like an instruction: “Alakulj át! Szabadulj fel!” (“Transform! Free yourself!”). Gábor Veres on vocal duty, with Ivett Dudás adding slight whispers, Krisztián Varga and Zoltán Vigh play lead guitar, and Dario Cei adds flute.
The single follows “Búcsú a piros madártól” and sits among the twelve tracks of XIII: Sárga erdő, an album Kátai describes as having no unifying lyrical concept, only the feeling of wandering through the forest of past times. It was recorded at various locations and at Miracle Sound Szeged, with live drums for the first time in the project’s history and thirty-four musicians and vocalists alongside a twenty-voice male choir. The folk and classical instrumentation is used only where a song needs it.
Pre-order & pre-save XIII: Sárga erdő: https://orcd.co/thycatafalquesargaerdo
Thy Catafalque began in Makó, in southeastern Hungary, in 1998, and has been Kátai’s solo-authored vision since Rengeteg in 2011, realised with a rotating cast of guest musicians. A studio-only project for more than two decades, it played live for the first time in 2021 and has since won two Fonogram Awards, Hungary’s equivalent of the Grammy, for Vadak and Alföld. 2025 brought debuts at Hellfest, Rockstadt Extreme and Alcatraz, the project’s first shows in Latin America, and a European headline tour opening at Budapest’s Dürer Kert in March 2026.
XIII: Sárga erdő was produced by Tamás Kátai and recorded at various locations and at Miracle Sound Szeged in Szeged, Hungary. The album was engineered, mixed and mastered by Gábor Vári at Miracle Sound Szeged. Artwork is by Tamás Kátai, with photography by Laszlo Horvath.
Tamás Kátai says:
“The title means Masses and this is definitely the heaviest and darkest piece here.
The lyrics are about the method of waste disposal by incineration, and the process of how the waste is being divided into heat and slag or lifeless masses and how matter shifts its shape during different chemical and physical circumstances. You can apply the phenomenon to the human mindset affected by the daily life if you wish but that’s just an idea.
This is our first video with the band playing a song. We have Gábor Veres here on vocals and we also have a flute in the track.”
