Thy Catafalque shares new single “Búcsú a piros madártól” from upcoming album

Hungarian avant-garde metal project Thy Catafalque drops “Búcsú a piros madártól” (“A Farewell to the Red Bird”) today, alongside a new music video. The track opens “XIII: Sárga erdő,” the project’s thirteenth album, arriving November 20th through Season of Mist.

Written and produced by mastermind Tamás Kátai, “Búcsú a piros madártól” marks a notable first for the project. Live drums replace the programmed rhythms of previous records, sitting beneath layered vocals, kamancheh, and lead guitar. According to the press material, the combination gives the track a heavier, more physical pull than its title might suggest.

That shift carries across all of “XIII: Sárga erdő” (“Yellow Forest”). The twelve-track album features thirty-four musicians and a twenty-voice male choir. Folk and classical instrumentation, including piano, strings, brass, sitar, kamancheh, and zither, appears throughout. However, Kátai reportedly approached these elements with more restraint than on last year’s “XII: A gyönyörű álmok ezután jönnek.” Rather than a concept record, he describes “Sárga erdő” as carrying no single story, only a felt sense of wandering back through old, half-remembered time.

Kátai also directed the video himself. He filmed it in the woodland near his family home in Makó, beside the river Maros. That same stretch of ground hosted the very first Thy Catafalque video twenty-five years ago, and another clip is already in the works there. Live footage from recent shows in Brazil, France, and Hungary appears alongside hand-made and digital animation, all left deliberately unpolished. “I wanted to keep it that way,” Kátai says, “because it has a more personal touch.”

“XIII: Sárga erdő” is available to pre-order now via Season of Mist.

1. Búcsú a piros madártól
2. Ég-anyám, föld-apám
3. Dunnák alatt kék mezo
4. Szitaköto
5. Suhamló éji fák
6. Puszta
7. Sirató
8. Cseremisz
9. Sárga erdo
10. Tömbök
11. Kút vizén nap forog
12. 87 tavasz, 87 osz