Canada may not be best known for its death metal bands but it certainly has had its share of memorable ones - Gorguts, Cryptopsy, and of course Kataklysm.  Though it took the band a few years to really find their sound, by the time 2000 rolled around and they unleashed The Prophecy, it was clear this was a fine-tuned death metal machine ready to take on anyone in the world.  Epic (The Poetry of War) followed in even bolder fashion and 2002 saw the landmark release Shadows & Dust touch down.  Vocalist Maurizio Iacono expands on the story behind this northern powerhouse…

Did you do a Canadian tour after Death Across America?
We did do that.  It went very well.  We didn’t expect much.  We decided to just do it and get a little practice on the new tracks.  A lot of people showed up.  Great merch sales.  We had a good time. 

Was it all Canadian bands on that tour?
Yeah, Necronomicon from Montreal and the other one was Blood of Christ from Toronto.

I read that you toured in Mexico in 1995…how did that go?
Yeah, that was a while back.  Crowdwise & show-wise it was great.  There was always a lot of people.  They were very receptive.  It was our second tour in our careers.  We did Europe, that was our first tour, then we did Incantation inside the United States and we did Mexico within the U.S. tour.  It went well, but the conditions were very poor and it was very difficult.  That was one of the longest running tours ever; we did over 15 shows.

How were the fans different?
In Mexico City, there are a lot of shows that go there, so people are able to see more bands than the rest of the country.  So, when you go to the other places, they are hungry for shows.  When you get there, they are very receptive & very crazy.  It is very wild & they make you feel at home.  We had a great time.  I saw some crazy stuff over there.  A fan came up to us and had his whole leg tattooed with Mystical Gate.  The tattoo covered all over his leg.  I was like “Shit, that is some pretty painful thing to go through,” and we were like “Fuck, we got to get him into the show,” so we kind of treated him that night.  When you are just starting off and you see that, it is a big impact. 

How is Canada, the U.S?
Compared to Montreal, it is a very spoiled city, and we get all the shows here, people just choose the shows they go to.  It’s a good scene.  In the states, it is a very difficult market.  There really is no place for in between, like middle-sized bands.  Either you are small or you are big.  There is not a market for bands like Kataklysm.  It is difficult, because crowds do not come out unless there are big bands out touring.  Sometimes that hurts a band’s image, but we are trying to fix that problem. 

How many times have you toured through Europe?  You seem to be well received over there.
We have toured through Europe five times & through the states too, five times.   Europe is our main market.  Maybe having Germany, the home of our label, is definitely a boost it being based there and they are very strong.  Nuclear Blast is the strongest independent right now.  We get really good promotion out of them.  That is the main market for Kataklysm.  It always has been.  Since we started it was the continent that was open to us.  We just kind of blew up.  This new record is doing extremely well right now.  I’ve never seen such hype for a record that we’ve released there.

What were the differences with Nuclear Blast and how does the relationship stand now with the label?
When we started, everyone was calling us the “death metal hope” and there was a lot of hype around the band & a lot of expectations.  We were very young & Nuclear Blast expected a lot out of Kataklysm.  We did do well for them and they were satisfied with a lot of our stuff, but one thing that started hurting us is we came a little late.  We were founded in 1991, which is really at the boom of the whole death metal scene, but when we actually released our first record it was ’95 when the whole black metal scene started moving.  They started signing a lot of black metal & power metal and going away from the whole death metal scene at that time.  That really hurt us enormously.  One of our most important records, The Temple of Knowledge, was coming out in ’96, and the U.S. office was shutting down and they were changing a lot of personnel & a lot of things at the label and we got caught in the middle of it and it really hurt us and we decided maybe it was not the right place for us to be at that time.  We decided to leave the label.  We had a lot of discussions about it and they held us back for a year.  We couldn’t do anything for a year.  Eventually, we fixed our problems.  We released a record on Hypnotic Records in Canada and it went okay.  It was a different type of record for Kataklysm.  A lot of changes also happened after that whole break-up with Nuclear Blast.  We survived it all.  When the label started having some financial problems while we were recording The Prophecy, we were searching for a label, and Nuclear Blast contacted us right away and wanted us back on the label.  So we re-negotiated and they promised to take care of us this time and they’ve done that.  I am very happy with everything. 

Is that around the same time you took over the vocals as well?
Yeah.

What happened to the original vocalist?
He disappeared.  He wanted to do his own thing, so he went off and started another band.  He had the same problems that he had with us:  communication with his band members.  He is a control freak individual and it is hard to work with a guy who wants to do everything.  He wants to write music, but he has never played an instrument in his life.  It becomes a difficult situation to deal with.  The guy doesn’t even know how to hold a guitar and he wants to tell you how to play.  He did the same thing with his other band and the band kicked him out.  Nothing ever happened with him.  He disappeared from the scene. 

Do you miss playing bass at all?
I still play bass.  I miss playing it live.  But I am getting used to doing the singer thing now and I am getting better and better at it forgetting about it, but it is always cool to remember the times I used to do it.  I write a lot of the music in Kataklysm, so I always play bass and guitar. 

How do you see the landscape of metal having changed over the past 10 years?
In my opinion, death metal is dead.  It has been dead for a long time.  The early 90s was the big boom.  What I mean by dead is that it is not at the commercial level.  I think it is where it is supposed to be.  This is underground music.  I think the majors killed it by trying to release it to the masses.  I think the whole Columbia thing for Carcass and Napalm, with all their best records doing really well as far as numbers, but for them (the majors) it was just peanuts and not good enough.  It showed the world that death metal is not a good thing and it hurt the whole scene.  It fucked it up at that time. Everyone went to black metal and power metal and that is the big thing.  The cool thing about death metal right now is that there is not an over-saturation of bands.  The bands that are here are the bands that are good and are working hard with their music and feeling there is something to be done still.  New bands coming out that are doing impact, it is not like 10 bands like before, but there is at least one a year that is making an impact.  There is just a lot of different stuff.  Take a band like Kataklysm, even after 10 years on our sixth record we are still reinventing ourselves and working hard to make something different and push the style.  If other bands continue doing this, I think there could be a revival.

Do you believe there are any misconceptions with metal & death metal?
I think people are very narrow-minded.  They see a band and say “you are death metal and you are supposed to sounds a certain way.”  A lot of people who do not like a certain Death Metal sound like Cannibal Corpse, they might like Kataklysm, but since they see both bands are death metal, they are going to think we sound like them.  Sometimes it does hurt you, but in another way it does bring people to the music.  The only thing that really bothers me is you get the fans from the early days who listened to you in that part of your career, but won’t listen to you now.  They are convinced in their minds that it is not as good just because you’ve had some line up changes, even though the music is much better now.  The band’s matured and we are 10 years older now and much wiser and better musicians and arrange our stuff much better now.  And people won’t give us a chance.  I think if Prophecy would have been our first record when we re-signed the band would be much bigger than what it really is.  People judge us either from the past or from the future, there is always a problem somewhere (laughs).

During that period between labels, was it difficult not being able to put any music out at that time?
Definitely.  I think it was very hard: the whole survival. All the big bands survived because they were well off.  But the bands that were a step lower got hurt and disappeared.  Now all those bands that disappeared are coming back one after another.  It is kind of weird.  I really don’t like that whole re-forming thing that is going on, because they all disappeared when it mattered.  It was fucked up.  There was only black metal around and a handful of death metal bands doing something.  Now it is starting to come back and everyone is starting to show up again.  It was a very difficult time; we stuck through it and stuck our neck above water and made it and now we are one of the top death metal bands at the moment.  It was a lot of hard work and we are still fighting, especially in the U.S. market.  We are still striving and having a hard time getting a big tour.  We still get turned down on a lot of tours.  I think the band needs to get on a big tour.

What have you learned the most from touring?
It is a very important source of information for people to come to the shows to see the band.  A lot of people that we have played to have never even heard of Kataklysm before and they see this wall of extremity in their face and think “what the fuck is going on?”  At the same time there are melodies and they get into that.  They are like “Holy Shit” and get to check the record out.  The live aspect has been the heart of many death metal bands.  Without the live aspect, I don’t think bands can really survive.  The difficult thing about touring is that it is hard to live off it and there is not much money involved in death metal.  The conditions are not that great, especially in the U.S. market.  Tour buses are only for the really big bands, so you have to tour in vans.  I’ve learned you have to work hard and when you get to a certain level you have to work harder.  You just look at the road ahead and it is crazy. 

Do you pay attention to what the press has to say about the band?
It is very important for me to see what the press is thinking, because they are our voice because they are telling the kids what is going on.  Of course, I follow the press and what they say.  I believe in criticism, whether it is good or bad.  You learn from certain opinions.  We do our music and we have never really changed our path as a band.  We’ve always decided to do something that is different, that is us, that is Kataklysm.  Always worked on that.  Obviously every record is different from each other; every song is different from each other, that is a trick that we’ve always kept because I think it is interesting to be like that.  Our style is now starting to be the right timing for us.  I think when we started we were ahead of our time.  We were too extreme and I think nowadays people are more open to us.