THY CATAFALQUE Release New Single “Búcsú a piros madártól”

THY CATAFALQUE, the Hungarian avant-garde metal project of Tamás Kátai, release new single and music video “Búcsú a piros madártól” (“A Farewell to the Red Bird”) today, opening XIII: Sárga erdő, the band’s thirteenth album, out November 20th via Season of Mist.

Watch the video for Búcsú a piros madártól: https://youtu.be/E3w2aJdt2c0

Written and produced by Kátai, “Búcsú a piros madártól” opens the album on a note of departure and resignation—a voice calling after something already gone, its sound swallowed by fog and distance. Live drums, a first for the project, sit under layered vocals, kamancheh and lead guitar, giving the track a heavier, more physical pull than its title suggests.

The single sets the tone for Sárga erdő (“Yellow Forest”), a twelve-track album Kátai describes as carrying no single unifying story—only a felt sense of wandering back through old, half-remembered time. It’s the first THY CATAFALQUE record built around a live drummer rather than programmed rhythm, drawing on thirty-four musicians and a twenty-voice male choir, with the folk and classical instrumentation—piano, strings, brass, sitar, kamancheh, zither—handled with more restraint than on the maximalist XII. 

Pre-order & pre-save XIII: Sárga erdő: https://orcd.co/thycatafalquesargaerdo

Kátai shot the “Búcsú a piros madártól” video himself, in the woodland ten minutes’ walk from his family home in Makó, beside the river Maros—the same stretch of ground where the band’s very first video was filmed twenty-five years ago, and where another is already in the works. Live footage from Thy Catafalque’s shows in Brazil, France and Hungary is cut together with hand-made and digital animation, left rough by design. “I wanted to keep it that way,” Kátai says, “because it has a more personal touch.”