I clearly remember when I bought my first Kataklysm album back in '95; it was their debut full-length album Sorcery and frankly I wasn't impressed at all, so I kinda lost interest and ignored them for quite some time, but I kept hearing their name mentioned over and over again so it sparked my curiosity once again and I decided to buy their previous album Shadows and Dust, and I was immediately blown away so I went out right away and brought their two albums prior to Shadows and Dust and they both possessed the same energy and vitality so I was hooked.

Now Kataklysm is ready with the successor to the aforementioned Shadow and Dust and the new album Serenity in Fire continues almost exactly where Shadows… left off so basically there's really nothing new under the sun here. We're still dealing with high quality and very diverse death metal with a few melodic and black metal elements built in, but Serenity in Fire is also an album that despite it heavy reliance on the now well-known formula that Kataklysm have been building up over the course of their last three albums still manages to sound very fresh and full of vitality. Serenity in Fire ranges from being ultra-fast over to slower and very catchy mid-paced songs, and prime examples of this are "The Resurrection" and "Blood on the Swans" only to name two, but the album is actually perfectly and equally divided between the fast and mid-paced part, proving this is a really worked through effort. Some personal favourites are "The Ambassador of Pain", "The Tragedy I Preach" and "Under the Bleeding Sun", but all in all there's really not a single bad song on Serenity in Fire.

A small minus with the album is the over-exaggerated use of drum triggers, which makes the drums seem very artificial and sterile, but all in all this is a minor thing that in no way spoils the overall experience. If you liked Kataklysm's previous works, then you can in no way go wrong with Serenity in Fire which stays true all the way to what we've come to expect from the Northern hyper blasters.