KATAKLYSM - the name alone conjures up images of brutality, pain and war. The music that they play will take you "In The Arms Of Devastation" - the title of their latest album, appropriately enough. Mixed by Tue Madsen at Denmark's Antfarm Studios, "In The Arms Of Devastation" is the eighth album from the famed purveyors of the Northern Hyperblast and will surely satisfy any fan of real Metal. In addition to their latest studio triumph, KATAKLYSM have also recently completed an amazing North American tour alongside VADER, DESTRUCTION, SPEED\KILL/HATE, GRAVEWORM and THE ABSENCE.

First of all, the tour is almost over; you've gone through Europe with GRAVEWORM and DESTRUCTION before - how has this tour been compared to the previous one?

"In America, I would say... what's the biggest difference here - every band really draws their own crowd. The positioning of the bands doesn't really matter, like everybody draws their own thing and it's been a killer tour everywhere. Some cities, DESTRUCTION will bring their old school fans and some cities will draw everybody and it's like every night is a big metal party - it's been a really killer tour. Like all the major cities have been almost sold out, like L.A. was sold out, Montreal was like eight hundred people and the Florida shows were killer, like almost everywhere. We had like maybe one or two shows that went under, maybe two hundred people, but everything else was great."

Alright, now why did you guys decide to work with KITTIE's Morgan Lander for a duet on "It Turns To Rust"?

"That was actually Maurizio's idea, 'cause we were looking for a female vocal guest and we thought about KITTIE 'cause they're Canadians and we had already INTO ETERNITY from Canada was doing guest vocals and we're like, 'let's do a Canadian guest thing on this new album.' We wanted also to try something different, but we knew that she could pull something very cool because she has very extreme vocals and we worked her in the studio and I think that song came out really good, we were very happy with it, everything. Like she really brings something to the song, I think, to the album."

Alright, now I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but on every CD I've ever seen from you guys and on every press release, there's this typo on there where the band's name is misspelled with K's. Why is that?

(laughing) "When we started this band, the old singer named the band KATAKLYSM from the Latin word Kataklysmos, which was spelled with K's and then when we came in the band, we thought it sounded a little funny in Latin, so we said 'let's put it in English', but then we kept the K's instead of the C's, so that's how we got the spelling for that. (laughs)"

Alright, I heard that you missed a Helsinki show, you had this thing in the airport where your flight board had said "flight 666 to HEL". (laughter) What were the details behind that whole thing?

"That was a weird day. (laughs) We finished playing the show in Tilburg in Holland and then right after the show, the tour bus came and dropped us off at the airport, so we had to wait, pretty much, until the next morning to get on the plane, so we stayed up all night and when we went around six o'clock in the morning to board the flight, the attendant told us the flight is canceled, like 'oh shit, what can we do?' They offered their help, 'cause we didn't want to miss the show, so they said 'okay, don't worry, we're going to rebook you guys, at twelve there's going to be another flight, just wait and we'll see you on it.' Okay, we're waiting, waiting... we're all getting super tired and then we get back to the counter over there and then the girl's like 'okay, here's your flight tickets', we look at the stub and we're like, 'holy shit!' (laughter) 'Are you kidding me? This is crazy, you can't sell this!' (more laughter) Okay, we finally board the flight, which gets delayed again, but we made it on and then we landed in Copenhagen in Denmark and we had to switch to another plane, but we missed the other flight 'cause this one was delayed an hour, so we got to Helsinki somewhere around ten o'clock at night; we arrived there and no instruments, (laughter) so Max was really starting to freak out and me and Maurizio said 'okay, let's go to the show.' We left Max with our sound guy behind at the airport just to wait for the gear. We got to the show, we talked with the people and tried to explain why we might not be playing the show and the BOLT THROWER's 'okay, don't worry, it's cool; play after us if you want', but we were waiting for our stuff and Max was still back at the airport. Finally, they made it back at the club with the gear and everything around one o'clock at night, everybody had left already and it was impossible to play the show, which sucked 'cause there was like six hundred people there, a good venue and everything and it was our first time in Finland, so it was just a crazy ride. We stayed up like thirty-six hours or something at the airport."

Okay, tell us a little bit about the DVD you're going to be having come out. I know that you've got a show in Europe that is being filmed and there's going to be some video clips, but what else can we expect off of that?

"We were thinking about that. There's going to be this festival show - it's going to be a killer show, it's going to be in front of fifteen-thousand people and we're going to put everything in there, like there's going to be lights and fireworks, the whole big deal. We're going to record it professionally and then we want to put also with it, as a bonus, the audio CD just if people want to listen to it in their CD player or in their car or whatever. Then we're going to have another DVD with the bonus features; there's going to be a small documentary on our whole career, 'cause we've been filming stuff from day one, like on every tour, stuff that happened and everything - we just want try to piece everything together and make our own homemade video documentary... want to make it kind of like what PANTERA did with the old 'Cowboys From Hell' video back in the day, want to kind of make something like this, with our own video footage, so we're going to start working on it pretty soon. Hopefully it will turn out decent."

Okay, what was it like working with Tue Madsen on the new album?

"That was a good experience for me, 'cause in the past I always recorded and mixed all our albums and this time I was talking with the guys 'You know what? Let's try something different.' 'Cause the way things were going was good, but it was pretty similar to the last two records and I didn't want that - I wanted something different. I was listening to the new albums from THE HAUNTED and stuff like that and said "something kind of like that, we want it, but KATAKLYSM at the same time" and I went and talked with the guys and said 'why not just use their mixer to mix our record if we want to achieve that sound?' That's what we did - we tried it and Tue Madsen was super easy to work with, he sent me mixes through the Internet, the we were listening to it and giving him comments online and we were exchanging mix and comments for like a week and then we decided on the final thing and then everybody was super happy with the result."

Now I noticed the link to the "Shrek"/KATAKLYSM video on YouTube on your website. Where did that come from?

"Some fan sent it to us on our message board and we all started laughing like crazy for like ten minutes, so we said 'okay, we have to put it on the website.'"

Okay, if there's anything else you'd like to add, please do so now, because I just realized I'm out of questions. (laughter)

"Well thanks for the support, the interview and thanks to everybody that checked out our last album, 'cause apparently it's still selling strong, the label is telling us. We're very happy that the way people have reacted to our new stuff, especially on these last two tours, the reaction has been completely crazy in Europe and here in America, it's been over the top in Canada. We could not have expected for as good, like even the reviews and everything has been crazy, so a big thank you to everyone and thank you for your support." [FIN]