"It was a difficult time", reflected Maurizio Lacono on his transition to vocalist of Kataklysm following the departure of Sylvain Houde after the Temple Of Knowledge album in 1996, "because Sylvain was very famous. He was very out there and very eccentric and a lot of fans liked him as far as how crazy he was with everything and the type of person he was. He sang more about things that were supernatural and mystical and stuff like that, whereas I am more an everyday life kind of guy: I see and feel and then I put it in my music, It's about real experiences and down to Earth things done in a poetic way but when I write about something it needs to be about real life. I don't do ghosts and stuff like that (laughs), mystical things and satanism are just not me so there was a big difference in gap when we did that and it was a tough time. Some of the people that were following him were having a hard time accepting me as becoming the vocalist. Although I was the leader of the band and I started this band they didn't see it like that so it was a bit different. It was a transitional period of a couple of records and years where things were a bit rough but we got our foothold and eventually we started getting a big fan base and here we are now part of that front running movement of the death metal scene today so we're very happy about how everything turned out".In the full interview Maurizio delves more into the period when he went from bassist to vocalist, the upcoming Australian tour with Hypocrisy, being the oldest signed band to Nuclear Blast Records, the title of the tour - Death Is Just The Beginning, the musical climate that gave birth to the band, Kataklysm's place in the scheme of the death metal genre, changes in musical direction on the album Victims of the Fallen World and more