Shadows & Dust

“Shadows And Dust” is my first encounter with Kataklysm, and I am mighty impressed. Great, catchy death metal songs, with awesome deep and guttural “traditional” death vocals, and a higher pitched more “black metal-ish” style voice. The first track (“In Shadows And Dust”) is a killer, and gets right into your head, especially the blast speed dual vocal parts. Great stuff. In fact, the whole album is full of catchy songs. The first three songs stand out as some of the best on the album, although my personal favourite would have to be “Years Of Enlightenment / Decades In Darkness”, which manages to cover a wider range of speeds, and has a great chorus. Production wise, the guitar sound is awesome (very heavy), and the vocals come through at a perfect level that lets you hear the instruments as well as the singing. Personally, I would have liked to hear a louder snare drum, which gets drowned out a bit by the very loud bass drum. Overall, a great release.