Kataklysm: Of Ghosts And Gods

Canadian veterans hold fast to their hyperblast

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

Whatever side of the ‘you always know what you’re going to get’ argument you stand on, there is no denying that there are few bands out there today who can boast the sort of dogged reliability that Kataklysm have shown during their career.

For 24 years now the French-Canadian veterans have been steadily releasing one solid album of death metal after another, rarely – especially in their modern era – deviating away from the musical blueprint that they’ve steadfastly stuck to across 11 albums.

It’ll come as no surprise then that, while the likes of Breaching The Asylum and The Black Sheep perhaps make latest album Of Ghosts And Gods the biggest venture into more melo-death territories that we’ve heard yet, overall what we have here is business as usual – 10 tracks of patented Kataklysm no-nonsense, razor-sharp ferocity, filled to the gills with hyperblasts, and all ably led by another fine vocal performance from Maurizio Iacono. Groundbreaking it’s not, but you’d be hard pushed to find something here not to like.