I fucking love Sorcery. It was a chaotic batch of intense death metal with creative drumming, a great sense of Swedish-influenced melody, an awesome barrage of vocal insanity delivered by Sylvain Houde, and grand epic pieces of song writing. The same could be said of the various EP’s of that time period and even a lot of Temple of Knowledge (though I hated the production on it and even more so on the following live album). When I heard guitarist J-F Dagenais comment on the difficulty of recording his guitar parts for the album and his related claim about its intensity and technical ability I got excited. I thought it may be possible that they were moving away from the simplistic, straight forward nature of the bulk of their releases and closer to a more revitalized sound. God damn, I really need to stop reading this shit.

The music- as to be expected- is actually an extension of Serenity in Fire. Whoops. While it doesn’t sound identical per say, the final product is still relatively the same: really generic song structure, basic overlying melodic framework, and textbook dual pitch screeching back and forth. There is some decently better riffing here or there, but it’s nothing especially great. Been there, done that. In comparison to the psychotic beast Kataklysm once was, this is piss poor. Also, Maurizio Iacono is pretty unspectacular vocally.

Not to mention there is a pretty huge waste of guest performances. You have guest performances from the vocalist and guitarist of Into Eternity in the last track "The Road to Devastation". Now, this right here would be a perfect time to pull out all the stops and go for straight blistering brutality; you know the guest musicians can deliver the technical ability needed (as seen from their melding of Dream Theater’s technical ability and Death’s extremity). However, in the end, Kataklysm opts for a non-descript mid-tempo melodic death metal track in the Gothenburg vein. They don’t really allow for the vocalist to take on too much of a distinctive foot hold in his delivery in the chorus and merely exploit the guitarist in the solo at the end. The solo, while slightly peaking into the talent Into Eternity is known for, ends up becoming absolutely forgettable and fades into the programmed ambience. What a waste.

Then there is the guest presence of some chick from Kittie. Yeah that’s right; Maurizio for some odd reason thinks a member of Kittie can deliver an awesome vocal performance. I haven’t heard much by Kittie but I have heard some, and what I heard made me cringe. Their vocalist couldn’t scream her way out of a lifeless field with absolutely nothing to impede sound, much less the microphone of a shitty death metal album. Then there is also that God awful Pink Floyd cover they did. Seriously, how did they get popular? The sum total of the band’s looks makes Angela Gossow’s grizzled man-features look like fucking Cleopatra. I’d rather load up that animated internet porno of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and furiously masturbate to the scene where April O’Neal rides Michelangelo down a flight of stairs and then comes into Krang’s mouth than be forced to look at the members of Kittie. Well, the ugly hag- as expected- delivers a performance so shitty I can’t even tell where she is on the album! Then again, knowing Kittie, that might be a good thing.

If you’re a fan of Kataklysm’s last release, by all means jump right on in. The sound is more or less the same direction and you’re going to get some kick out of it, I guess. I, on the other hand, am going to pretend this doesn’t exist and that the band died in a horrible freak lubricant factory accident after Northern Hyperblast.

Written By: Necro-tron