Never Surrender

When is death life affirming?

For the answer, we turn to four Canadian longhairs fond of tunes that come at you with the speed and fury of fired munitions.

Kataklysm is a long-running death metal band out of Montreal whose repertoire teems with pissed-off sounding, yet positive-minded platitudes akin to chicken noodle soup for the headbanger's soul.

Their sound is dark and relentless -- crazy, octopus-armed drumming, buzz saw riffing, vocals suggestive of a disgruntled Orc -- but their message is one of hopefulness and triumph, at least of late.

"Overcome the pain, take away the fear," singer Maurizio Iacono growls with grizzly bear force on "Taking the World By Storm" from Kataklysm's most recent album, "Prevail." "I will conquer this life," he later adds.

"Never seen the face of defeat, never felt the cries of the weak, never once thought of surrender," he bellows on the disc's title track. "I will rise to the end."

Iacono's words aren't lost on the band's fan base, which has grown steadily over nearly two decades, and which has been known to take direct heed of Kataklysm's punishing pep talks.

"You meet people sometimes who have hard times in life," says guitarist Jean-Francois Dagenais. "A fan came up to us on the last tour and told us that our music saved his life, that he was going to commit suicide and he was listening to one of our songs so much, that the message kept him alive. Those kind of things really make me feel good about having done this all these years."

When the band formed in 1991, while still in high school, they were an all-together different beast, coming with what sounded like chaos theory set to a beat (and a really, really fast one at that), preoccupied with a wind-shearing velocity that they dubbed "hyperblast" and a kind of pitch-black mysticism.

"We wanted to be, like, the most crazy band ever, with the craziest strong structures and tempo shifts and be the fastest and the heaviest. You have a lot of anger when you're in high school," Dagenais chuckles. "Then we got a call from a guy from Nuclear Blast Records in Germany saying that he loves the stuff and he wants to give us a record deal. And we were like, 'What?' "

But since then, Kataklysm has become one of death metal's gateway acts, infusing its tunes with melodic flourishes and hooks, less frenzied time signatures and vocals that are still guttural, but more decipherable than most in the genre.

As such, Kataklysm has become one of the few bands of its ilk to be able to consistently tour with acts outside of the death metal ranks, groups such as bluesy hard rockers Danzig, black-metal favorites Dimmu Borgir and thrash pioneers Kreator.

Because of this, they've seen their audience expand with most every release, with the anthemic "Prevail," their most immediate, spontaneous-sounding effort, further elevating their profile.

It's the rare death metal album that non-death metal fans might dig. This music is an acquired taste, the sonic equivalent of a slasher flick, but this bunch has done well in terms of broadening the genre's palate a bit.

To keep the momentum going, Kataklysm plans to hit the studio this spring to record "Heaven's Venom," which is due out in October.

"I think we went a little more intricate on the new album," Dagenais says. "The song structures are a little more all-over-the-place compared to the 'Prevail' album. But we still have lots of hooks, all our melodies and the classic Kataklysm elements are there. It's not so much different, because we're still who we are, but I feel with this next album, we pushed it a little further on the arrangements."

Dagenais is an amiable dude, as upbeat as many of his band's tunes, and his enthusiasm is palpable as he talks up Kataklysm's next release.

He's been doing this since he was a teenager, and in many ways, he still sounds like one.

"We're older, but we still feel really young," he says. "We just go for it. I think playing music keeps you young at heart."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.