It’s A Sweet Ride, Mama! The Carnival Of Death Comes ToThe Overflow Brewery, Featuring Vader, Kataklysm, Malevolent Creation And Skeletal Remains, Ottawa, Canada, October 22, 2025

Brutality!
Circle pits!
Wrecked lower lumbar regions!
….undiscoveredand surprisingly convenient LRT stops?

Reminiscing the days of when I was active in conducting interviews for KNAC a few years ago, I’d scheduled an interview session where I was the respondent this time around at Carleton University campus on the same day that the infamous Carnival Of Doom tour had hit up the Overflow. While the interview topics about my work history for a university project weren’t exactly on the same excitement level for pure rockers as talking hockey with the members of HAMMERFALLor reminiscing with Brann Dailor of MASTODON over the best Lollapalooza lineups, it still made for a decent – and efficient – interview all the same. Moreso, upon realizing that the Overflow was actually not as far from campus as I’d thought, being a couple of LRT stops away, I was able to catch as much of the show as I could even after a kilometre and a half walk with an extra 20 pounds on my back, having made the brilliant decision to go to the interview straight from work along with my work laptop and docking station. How I’m not walking with a brace right now is but a miracle after hauling around a quarter of my office cubicle around on my back like a modern day sherpa.

Speaking of bare bones, upon my arrival at the Overflow, I’d discovered that I’d just missed SKELETAL REMAINS’ set by seconds, though I was told that they put on a killer performance by the follow-up band MALEVOLENT CREATION. Yes, that would be the same Florida-based death metal band known forthe infamous 2009 story involving frontman Phil Fasciana allegedly preventing a late-night convenience store robbery by shooting the armed robber dead and netting free chocolate milk for life for his actions by the grateful manager. They’re also the same Florida-based death metal band known for some of the genre’s top-tier albums including Stillborn, Retribution, Eternal, The Fine Art Of Murder, Warkult, The Will To Kill and their debut disc The Ten Commandments – and the night’s setlist would be comprised of a good song or two from each album. That said, with frontman Phil Fasciana still in recovery mode following a near-death bout of pneumonia he’d caught while in France during MC’s recent European tour, the band was down to a trio for the night’s show, with bassist Jesse Jolly handling the vocal duties. From Chris Cannella’s opening riffs of “Eve Of The Apocalypse” to the guttural death cries of “Dominated Resurgency” and “Premature Burial” to the closing strains of “Manic Demise” and “Blood Brothers” (dedicated to everyone who came out and to all of the fans in general), MALEVOLENT CREATION, despite being a man down that night, created a more benevolent scene of loyalty and solidarity amongst the flying limbs in the several circle pits in the audience – and never milking it for all of its worth either.

https://malevolentcreation.com/
https://www.facebook.com/MalevolentCreationOfficialBand
https://www.instagram.com/realmalevolentcreation/#

Loud, intimidating and Polish would best describe my brother-in-law during his midnight raids to the fridge, but it’s also the most apt description to bestow upon the country’s deathly dark lords VADER as they make their debut on the Overflow stage with the blistering number “Wings”. Led bysinger/guitarist Piotr “Peter” Wiwczarek, the quintet, which includes Maurycy “Mauser” Stefanowicz (rhythm guitar), Marek “Spider” Pajak (rhythm guitar), Tomasz “Hal” Halicki (bass) and Michał Andrzejczyk (drums), have been an active touring/recording band since 1983 – yes, even during the height of the Iron Curtain – and they put on a worthy performance that was not only heavily accented on, well, the accents, but on the brutal heaviness. You’ll dig the full-fledged onslaught of “The Final Massacre” and “This Is The War!”. You’ll marvel at the eerie obscureness of “Dark Age”, “Sothis” and “Triumph Of Death”. You’ll especially marvel even further over their flawless version of SLAYER’s “Raining Blood” as the closing number. And you’ll also respect the rest of the band’s soft side when they bring out a cake for Peter’s birthday and encourage everyone to celebrate along with them, completely catching him off-guard as the whole greeting was intended to be a surprise. Afterwards, you’ll be wondering where VADER have been all your life when they’ve been hiding in plain sight in the darkness this whole time. Once this tour wraps up and the band get ready to record their 13th studio follow-up to 2020’s Solitude In Madness, you’ll want to give these Polish death stars a bit more of a closer watch.

https://www.facebook.com/vader
https://www.instagram.com/vader_band_official/
https://x.com/vaderband

They came, they headlined – and they burned it all.

Such was the case when KATAKLYSM claimed that main stage and opened with the fiery prophetic banger “If I Was God…I’d Burn It All” followed quickly by the raging number “The Ambassador Of Pain”. It’s safe to say that it’s been a while since I last saw the mighty Montreal-based death metal pushers take the stage, though this was probably be the first time I’ve seen them as headliners, and I’ve honestly almost forgotten how musically proficient they’ve always been compared to their other contemporaries in the late 90’s Northern HyperblastQuebec death metal scene. Less quirky than VOIVOD, less technical than BENEATH THE MASSACRE and certainly less complex than CRYPTOPSY(give or take frontman Lord Worm’s past “live worm” eating stunts, which he’s seemingly stopped doing for well over a decade now), it’s their humble yet also straightforward and blunt approach to their playing and songwriting that, at least maybe to me, just makes KATAKLYSM a lot more enduring. Credit goes primarily to both frontman Maurizio Iacono and guitarist Jean-François Dagenais, who have been the band’s foremost members since its inception in 1991, in keeping their songwriting material well grounded – so well grounded that they barely have any need to explain the meaning

of the songs at any point. “Die As A King” and “Goliath” are pretty straightforward in their delivery, nicely eviscerating the notion of the dangers of unlimited power amongst leaders, particularly in the form of corruption, which only leads to one final outcome for those who abuse it. The same can also be said for “Guillotine” and “Narcissist” from 2018’s Jay Ruston-produced Meditations, its lyrical content heralding back to the Dark Ages. Even the introduction of a brand new song titled “The Rabbit Hole” merits just the right amount of context from Maurizio about its topic: The reality of fake news and both its ongoing dissemination and distribution. With both key members of KATAKLYSM residing mostly in the US for a number of years and raising families there, there’s a vested interest in how media consumption in this day and age is viewed as well as being intertwined with mass consumption of social media and fuelled especially by politics. In due time once the song finds itself on a new studio album, perhaps the Overflow audience will have bore witness to the birth of KATAKLYSM’s own version of “End OfThe Attention Span” but with more evil-sounding death metal brooding and Dagenais’ dark soloing and riffing. For that time being, the crowd continues to be taken back to the band’s halcyon days of the Northern Hyperblast era. “As I Slither” and “Push The Venom” strive through Maurizio’s channelled feelings of betrayal and despair(and legend has it that both songs were inspired by someone bringing in a live snake to the recording studio, supposedly triggering both Maurizio’s ophidiophobia a.k.a. fear of snakes and firing up his creativity). And closing out the night’s events would be the relatable-sounding “Crippled And Broken” and “The Black Sheep” – both going out from KATAKLYSM to the outcast tenderized moshpit participants that evening for keeping it real, according to Maurizio.
And real it was kept that night.

And if there’s any sort of take away from this review with regards to strong media influence here, it would be to continuously support your local arts establishment (especially if they have tacos on their menu) no matter how much of a dark off-the-beaten-path location it may be.

And to avoid circle pits when carrying a laptop and docking station in one’s knapsack.

Special thanks to all of the bands, to Overflow and to Christina from CHORD Productionsfor making this show happen. And special thanks to Joelle, Live Work Play and Andraea for setting up our interview before the show.

Setlist:

• “If I Was God…I’d Burn It All”
• “The Ambassador Of Pain”
• “Goliath”
• “Die AsA King”
• “Narcissist”
• “Guillotine”
• “The Rabbit Hole”
• “Bringer Of Vengeance”
• “In Shadows And Dust”
• “As I Slither”
• “Manipulator Of Souls”
• “Push The Venom”
• “Crippled And Broken”
• “The Black Sheep”

https://www.kataklysm.ca/
https://www.facebook.com/kataklysm/
https://www.instagram.com/kataklysmband/