Kataklysm - Prevail Review

Posted by Dan Haggerty on 09.22.2008

Kataklysm is back with their brand of brutal war-torn death metal. Does this assault achieve victory, or just blow apart at the seams?

Kataklysm hs been tearing up the death metal scene since the bands first release, Sorcery, back in 1995. These Canadians becoming one of that country’s biggest exports in the extreme market, with their brand of war, history, and mysticism turned up to overkill. The label has floated the attempt to create a new name for this bands sound, “Northern Hyperblast” after the bands live LP of the same name. Needless branding aside, the band has always maintained a very traditional death metal sound. Complex wall of technical chops, blastbeats, violent subjects matter, and vocals sounding like Iacano drinks a napalmed traced bottle of jack.


With eight albums under their belt, they are back to still prove their chops in an evolving metal scene. Can their ninth studio, Prevail still deliver the damage?








Track Listing

1. Prevail 03:56
2. Taking the World by Storm 04:01
3. The Chains of Power 03:18
4. As Death Lingers 03:32
5. Blood in Heaven 05:18
6. To the Throne of Sorrow 04:52
7. Breathe to Dominate 04:02
8. Tear Down the Kingdom 04:23
9. The Vultures Are Watching 05:58
10. The Last Effort (Renaissance II) 05:02

Total playing time 44:22


Current Line-Up

Stéphane Barbe - Bass
Jean-François Dagenais - Guitar
Max Duhamel - Drums
Maurizio Iacono - Vocals
François Mongrain - Session Bass


Collectors Information

There is also a version of the CD that includes a bonus DVD with a full live performance in Los Vegas. This version is also available as CD/DVD + T-shirt.

Bonus DVD tracklist:

01. Like Angels Weeping The Dark
02. As I Slither
03. In Shadows & Dust
04. Crippled and Broken
05. The Ambassador of Pain
06. Let Them Burn
07. Manipulator of Souls
08. The Resurrected
09. Face The Face of War
10. Where The Enemy Sleeps
11. The Road To Devastation


The Review

In a complacent landscape of musical norms, where major labels have manned the defenses of their own personal Normandy beach, it’s good to see there are some bands that are willing to take them head on and break through to the mainland. Nothing popular in the American metal scene about this, this is a full beach head attack, ironically coming from across our Northern border from Canada, and it drops an explosive amount of shock and awe from several miles high. Brutal death metal, touched with some melodic grooves, delivered with computerized GPS precision onto a scene defensive and dug into its trenches. Blowing away perceptions, standards, and an American scene still to willing to cling to the wrong elements of the earlier parts of this decade; this is the real bunker buster, and it just took out the mallcore scene like yesterday’s news.

This is brutal death metal, make no mistake about it. If you’re looking for accessible metal then you’re barking down the wrong missile silo. What makes this interesting, and defines it apart from their last album is the underlying sense of melody that groove through this brash attack, a rhythm that is surprising and catchy, hiding under strafing bullets that puts holes in your headphones. You might not catch it at first, but it is there, and adds surprising texture to what is otherwise a grand soundtrack to turning a third world country into a parking lot. No doubt about it, if you have a bad day at work Kataklysm is there to help you vent all that aggression.

The album starts and the band turns the conventions on their own sound, letting loose with two tracks that are stylistically not them. Where Kataklysm normally prefer a technical mosh of brutal structures to overwhelm you, herein on the opening salvo they ground and pound you with simple and straightforward riffs. The technical stuff comes, and Kataklysm goes back to piling up the sound later, but at the start things just drill with simple integrity. This is what it means to use simple structures sparingly to create dimension and depth.

From here, the band slips back into their more patented complex axe superiority, but surprisingly underlay the whole thing with that sense of rhythm I mentioned. A little groove, a little thrash, and I might even detect some power hiding under the Gatling-Gun drums. Its one thing to have a death metal album shove its leads down your throat, but quite anther to end up humming it’s rhythm an hour later. This thing packs some wonderful melodies hiding under it’s gory blood drenched skies. This is a chance the band is taking with the sound that has made them famous, but the risk is paying off.

As I said, this is not for everyone. This is extreme metal of those who walk such ravaged terrain. And while in many ways this might be the bands most accessible album to date, that is a matter of degrees. If you don’t like normal death metal, then this is the deep end of that pool and you should stay clear. To put it another way, if we made the analogy that death metal is the equivalent of the movie Saving Private Ryan, then Kataklysm is the first fifteen minutes of that film.

The 411: Kataklysm is a band that just keeps on assaulting, release after release of keeping it real and brutal. Prevail is coated with enough complex textures to make this an interesting evolution of the bands sound while still seemingly a return to straight forward extreme norms for the band. Technical, loud, brash, and memorable, I’m only left wondering why we just don’t drop this album on the Taliban and be done with it.

Final Score:  8.5   [ Very Good ]