When Kataklysm released Victims Of This Fallen World in 1998, the Canadian death metal band took a sharp stylistic turn that surprised — and alienated — plenty of longtime fans. Leaning heavily into groove and nü-metal aesthetics, the album remains one of the most divisive releases in Kataklysm‘s catalog.
In a new interview with Suicide Silence guitarist Chris Garza on The Garza Podcast, vocalist Maurizio Iacono explained that the record was very much a reflection of the time and the band’s internal state: “It was our nü-metal record. Every band does it. So that was the record that when I was telling you, sometimes you just got to let things take its time, right?”
According to Iacono, the shift followed the band’s extremely chaotic 1996 album Temple Of Knowledge, which pushed extremity to its limits: “After you do a record like Temple Of Knowledge that has, I don’t know, 250 riffs per song… it was just an animalistic kind of record and it revolutionized a lot of things. That was the pinnacle of that era for us.”
“We needed a complete break and rebranding and restructuring of the band at the time. You could see it right away — [the album art] didn’t look death metal. It shocked people.”
Iacono acknowledged that Kataklysm weren’t alone in experimenting during the late ’90s, a period when many heavy bands flirted with nü-metal as its popularity exploded. However, the local reaction in Montreal was brutal. A hometown show with Morbid Angel quickly made that clear.
“We come on there and the fans are just like [flipping the bird], throwing bottles and shit. I was like, ‘Fuck, we’re done.’ I thought that was it.”
Behind the scenes, the album also reflected a deeply difficult personal period for Iacono: “It was dark years. My father had died in ’97. It was very hard on me. That album came out with agony behind it. It’s a very dark period in the band’s career.”
Despite believing the band might be finished, Kataklysm pushed forward with a previously booked European tour with Vader — and that changed everything. That unexpected reception overseas gave the band a path forward.
“I was like, ‘Okay, there’s a movement here.’ What if we combined a little bit of the old stuff with this new direction? That’s when we started fine-tuning it — a hybrid of chaos, groove, and structure.”
That hybrid approach would ultimately guide Kataklysm out of their nü-metal detour and back toward the crushing, groove-driven death metal sound that later defined albums like Shadows & Dust and beyond.
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