http://chartattack.com/damn/2005/03/0820.cfm
Kataklysm Perfect Their Formula, Ditch The Need For Speed
Tuesday March 08, 2005 @ 04:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff
Kataklysm
Hand-picked by Glenn Danzig to open for his current Circle Of Snakes tour, Montreal death metal quartet Kataklysm couldn’t be more, well, shocked.
"It’s not the first tour we thought we’d be invited on," says vocalist Maurizio Iacono with a laugh. "This tour is a big test for us because we’re straight-up death metal where Danzig is bluesy rock. We’re the only band on the tour without clean vocals."
They need not worry. The strength, originality and passion of their latest effort Serenity In Fire is proof-positive that these guys are here to stay.
But it was only a matter of time before the band — now entering 12 years together —nailed down the formula. They’ve been putting out records at a ridiculous pace. Their ninth release in as many years, Serenity In Fire was released a full two years after its predecessor, Shadows & Dust.
"We toured so much (that) we couldn’t put an album in there," he says. "But we didn’t want to waste time. If we take too much time, we start to get confused. We’re more apt to writing songs where the first feel is the best. We’ve played together for so long that we know how to write with each other."
With guitarist JF Degenais, bassist Stephane Barbe and drummer Max Duhamel, Iacono believes that the band’s "fan playing the music" approach is their greatest appeal. Bucking the trend towards overly-technical playing and just bashing out what they want to hear, Kataklysm feel that they are on the verge of bringing death metal out of its everything-must-be-extreme slump. Let’s hope so.
"Other bands try to go as fast as they can, the most technical… every death metal album is ‘the MOST brutal, the MOST this, the MOST that,’" he sighs. "We’ve started to go for the song now. We write better material and break that mold. It's refreshing and sincere… and now we can tour with any band that has heavy guitars! Maybe if people pick up on that, death metal will be about the music again and not just topping each other all of the time."
—Keith Carman
Soilwork/In Flames is about as heavy as I go.
