Thy Catafalque release new single ‘Cseremisz’

THY CATAFALQUE, the Hungarian avant-garde metal project of Tamás Kátai, release new single and music video “Cseremisz” (“Cheremis”), the third single from XIII: Sárga erdő, the band’s thirteenth album, out November 20th via Season of Mist.

“Cseremisz” is a folk song that never existed. Cheremis is the older name for the Mari, a Finno-Ugric people who live along the Volga and Kama rivers in Eastern Europe, and Hungarian belongs to the same language family. Kátai invented the song as a folk song of that region and built it from traditional instruments and a choir: the Male Choir of Tiszaföldvár, Bálint Bokodi on vocals, Anikó Barna on citera and koboz, Dmitry Karev on accordion, Dario Cei on flute and Árpád Szenti on drums.

The lyrics move across the steppe at night. A steppe-gull soars over the plain, the narrator is the wolf in the reeds and the fox in the meadow, and a heart beats “like hooves on the steppe”. A black ship drifts down the Volga with its soldiers asleep aboard, and only the pounding of hooves is awake in the dark, a headlong flight that somehow feels beautiful. The song closes on a line it repeats and does not soften: “A halál mögöttem száll, utolér” (“Death flies behind me, and overtakes”).

The single follows “Búcsú a piros madártól” and “Tömbök” 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.

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

Tracklist:
1. Búcsú a piros madártól (06:04)
2. Ég-anyám, föld-apám (04:28)
3. Dunnák alatt kék mező (04:04)
4. Szitakötő (01:10)
5. Suhamló éji fák (05:04)
6. Puszta (04:58)
7. Sirató (03:58)
8. Cseremisz (04:05)
9. Sárga erdő (10:15)
10. Tömbök (04:59)
11. Kút vizén nap forog (04:06)
12. 87 tavasz, 87 ősz (10:52)
Full runtime: 01:04:03

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.

Tamás Kátai says:

“Cseremisz means Cheremis and they are a Finno-Ugric people living along the river Volga in Russia. They are an ethnic minority in Mari El Republic and because of the Finno-Urgic roots they are relatives to Hungarian people. We have learned about them in primary school, and they have always been a very distant and mystical people to me. This song is a fictitious folk song from that region that could be connected to recent historical events as well. We have some traditional instruments like citera and koboz here with accordion and a male choir together with Bálint Bokodi on vocals.”

Yellow forests don’t stay yellow for long. That’s the image Tamás Kátai keeps returning to when he talks about THY CATAFALQUE‘s thirteenth album, Sárga erdő—a title that translates plainly and then unfolds into something less settled the longer you sit with it. There’s no single story running through the record’s twelve tracks, Kátai says, only a feeling: wandering through a forest built from old time, half-remembered and already turning colour. It’s the quietest premise he’s worked from in years, and perhaps even the most honest one yet.

Sárga erdő, out this autumn via Season of Mist, was recorded across various locations and at Miracle Sound Szeged with Gábor Vári again handling engineering, mixing and mastering. It marks another first for the project: real drums, played rather than programmed, for the first time in Thy Catafalque‘s history. Thirty-four musicians and vocalists appear across the record, along with a twenty-voice male choir, but the folk and classical textures that flooded XII—sitar, kamancheh, zither, strings—are handled with a lighter touch here, chosen with more precision for the moments that call for them. There’s no unifying story across the twelve tracks, only that same felt sense of wandering through old, half-remembered time. A forest doesn’t explain its colours—it just keeps turning them, until you look up and you’re standing somewhere new.

Line-up:
Tamás Kátai — Guitar, Bass, Keyboards & Vocals

Guest Musicians:
Martina Veronika Horváth — Vocals (9, 12)
Ivett Dudás — Vocals (3, 10, 11)
Gábor Dudás — Vocals (2, 5, 11, 12)
Bálint Bokodi — Vocals (1, 8, 9)
Annamari Oláh — Vocals (6)
Lambert Lédeczy — Vocals (6)
Gergely Balla — Vocals (7)
Gábor Veres — Vocals (10)
Antal Cseh — Bass/Baritone Vocals (12)
The Male Choir of Tiszaföldvár — choir (8)
Anikó Für — Prose (5)
Árpád Szenti — Drums & Percussion
Krisztián Varga — Lead Guitar (1, 5, 6, 9, 10)
Zoltán Vigh — Lead Guitar (10)
Breno Machado — Lead Guitar (12)
Daniele Belli — Classical Guitar (12)
Anikó Barna — Citera & Koboz (8)
Chithrinie Nirupama — Sitar (4)
Peter Voronov — Violin (5)
Maria Grigoryeva — Violin (5)
Victor Morales — Violin & Piano (9)
Oleg Bezuglov — Violin (12)
Michaela Lilla Bos — Cello (9)
Francesco Pisciotta — String Arrangement (11)
Noam Dayan — Kamancheh (1)
Dmitry Karev — Accordion (8)
Dario Cei — Flute (8, 10)
Brandon Wilkins — Bassoon & Alto Flute (2)
Dan Rowland — Oboe d’Amore (7)
Kelly O’Donohue — Trumpet, Trombone & Flugelhorn (9, 11, 12)
Michele Fortunato — Trombone (12)
Patricio Böttcher — Alto Saxophone (3)
Efim Braylovskiy — Alto Saxophone (9)
Ibrahim Danbaba — Saxophone (11)