Krisiun

Works of Carnage (Century Media)
by Martin Popoff

Krisiun’s reputation has always ever so slightly exceeded its substance, but still, the band are at the forefront of traditional death metal, Brazil’s new tireless and nomadic ambassadors crafting redlined and circuitous extreme music that forms a revolving door of testimony and praise with the top American acts playing the same shitholes, often on the same crappy night. Moyses, Max, and Alex took a lot of stick for the door-knocker production of ’01’s Ageless Venomous, and this one’s no huge correction, Cryptopsy knob-jobber Pierre Remillard rendering Max’s bass drum as a metronomic moronic, non-stop, synthetic reality, turning speed into a grid.

But like I say, Krisiun are summarily revered, and the justification is in the cracks, in the angled spider-like rhythms Max conjures (seemingly detached from the bass drum work), and most notably, in Max’s ability to fold his native musical studies and his love of classical into event-stuffed riffs. Comes armed with a typically chilled and humorless cover of Venom’s warm and amusing punk rocker “In League With Satan” before a final “Outro” of wobbly death noise, presumably the sound dopes that don’t bring their earplugs hear after a hellish hovelled night in front of three or four “legends” plus home opener.
(2323 W. El Segundo Blvd. Hawthorne, CA 90250)