Kataklysm - Mystical Gate of Reincarnation
Review: In the cycle of advancement that takes blasting death metal further than it has existed before, no barrier comes so close to choking the music as that of opposition, meaning the passages within the music based on their own conflict which, so essential to the maintenance of the rhythmic tension transferred in straight speed, drives also their own demise from baffling themselves against each other, a powerful metaphor for human destruction.
With drums that play broken-phrase drumming alternating between death metal style double-hit jazz percussion, the counterpoint balance in each song is heavily driven toward the narrative as unifying element as tempo changes and beat changes vary too frenetically to track anything except the modification of the riff and verse dynamics. Vocals of throat torture and intense bass power propel the agenda over the maniac thrashing with a delivery of precise, Suffocation-style fixtures alongside almost black metal ripping open-mouth howling; guitars unleash their precision on variations of basic, even simplistic counterpoint riffing, but find a method of transferring the simple direction to an enlightened complement of drums; together vocals leading guitars leading drums the narrative is told, based on the highly-imaginative lyrics set in epic fantasies of unmodern times.
The paradox of Kataklysm is their strength of innovation; bold and powerful it exists in their creation of complex and aggressive songs from nothing, but shy and callow it is missing in some of the obvious harmonic progressions or meaningless dynamic note allocation that occurs; in other words, this music bows out of some of what it could use to make itself great, and consequently is somewhat cheesy and often resembles rock music through its similarity. These degradations however do nothing at all to diminish the sheer spirited enjoyment of this album for its maintenance of complexity within an acclaimedly brutal tempo, and only highlight how powerful the essence of this death metal hybrid can be.