### Krisiun: AssassiNation

#### 14/02/06 || Lord K Philipson

Fucken Krisiun completely floored me the first time I heard them, on the magnificent “Conquerors of Armageddon” (now that’s a fucken statement. If I was to be a conqueror of something, armageddon would be high up on my list, together with Peter Forsberg’s injuries) a few years back. I also witnessed them at Wacken shortly thereafter and managed to share a few words with the Brazilian death-squad. I expected the caveman-look-a-likes to go something like:

”- We. Ugh. Hungry. We. Must. Ugh. Play. Death. Metal. Ugh. Now. Ugh”.

They didn’t. They were nice as fuck and really friendly to all the fans coming up to them. They seem to be genuinely caring about their supporters. Sporting a life-style and looks that reeks of nothing but insane death metal, Krisiun pulled off a killer-set and left the grounds of Wacken annihilated.

Jesper of In Flames (who apparently knew I was a big fan of the band at the time) asked if I wanted him to take some photos of me and the boys for my personal collection. I said ”- Go fuck yourself, little bitch. Go play yer semi-metal bullshit-music and leave me alone. I’m hanging with real death metal people here. Your band sucks. MESHUGGAH!!!!!”, then I punched him in the nose. Or not. In Flames are cool-as-fuck people and I dig their music. Fuck off all of you Flames-bashers. I now have 2 framed shots of me and 2 of the brothers (I can never tell who’s who in that band, after all – they are brothers, they sported sunglasses, they have long hair and are huge as fucken containers). These shots are placed in my bookshelf, where I keep everything but books.

But this is all beside the point.

Krisiun lost me with the wonderfully produced (yes, I’m sarcastic as fuck) “Ageless venomous” album and I went back to listen to “Conquerors”, pretending “Ageless” didn’t fucken happen. That album held some cool material though the production just threw me off and I could never get into it. Yet to this day I can’t remember a single song from it. “Works of carnage” restored some faith in the band for me, but still I went back to “Conquerors” whenever I wanted a dose of Krisiun. The “Bloodshed”-thing they launched after that displayed a little more diversity in their sound and was a very welcome disc. Now “AssassiNation” arrives and it sounds like… Krisiun. There’s no 2 ways about it, Krisiun delivers death metal with a sound only they possess (well, fellow Brazilian’s Raebelliun tried to sound exactly like Krisiun but never managed to capture “it” in their sound).

It’s kinda hard to do a ground-breaking review of a band that’s sounding pretty much the same, album after album. Krisiun’s obviously one of those bands, without that being a shit-thing. They always bring top-notch death metal our way, but the difference from a previous album is little-to-none. It’s all about perfecting what they have done in the past. But playing a certain style of extreme death metal can’t be done in too many ways, if you don’t want to stray away from the concept completely. I don’t mean this in a bad way, I like bands who stay true to their sound and just works on enhancing it as they go along, even if it means little difference to the actual music.

To make a long story short:

These guys decided from day one that if they were to play music, they would do nothing but eat, breathe and shit (and actually play) death metal, 24/7. And this is exactly what they have been doing over the years. And I don’t know when they actually find the time to write and record albums since they seem to be touring exactly all the time. These bitches could probably be one of the most hard-working bands in the scene when it comes to hitting the road.

But back to the album.

As always, there are no compromises in sight with Krisiun’s way of death metal. While the material might not be nearly as catchy as on my fave, “Conquerors”, they still have me by my death metal-balls. There are drums exactly everywhere and those double-basses still ground and pound anything in sight. The always uninteresting guitar-solos take up as much place as they ever did. On top of that, Alex’ grunts are among the finest around.

There’s no changing the Krisiun-formula, and why would they? They have come a long way with what they do, and rightfully deserved it is.

“Bloodcraft” and “Fathers perversion” are the album’s strongest tracks with the first-mentioned holding a real neat chorus that invites everyone for some sing-along moments. There’s 3 things on this album that kinda bugs me though: The completely irrelevant “Summon”, together with “Doomed” and the cover of Motörhead’s “Sweet revenge”. Those tunes just feel out of place. There’s no need for some one-minute instrumentals’ on a Krisiun-album (they obviously disagree with me since they have pretty much always done this). Just like all those little instrumental shit-pieces on Pestilence’s “Testimony of the ancients” fucked the whole album up. This is not nearly as bad as that though, thank fuck.

There’s not much to add to this review, if you heard any of Krisiun’s previous work, you know what you get. High-quality fucken death metal. Death metal that is being perfected with each and every Krisiun-release.

8/10

- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: Century Media
- Website: www.krisiun.com.br
- Band
- Alex Carmago: vocals, bass
- Moyses Kolesne: guitars
- Max Kolesne: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Bloodcraft
- 02. Natural Genocide
- 03. Vicious Wrath
- 04. Refusal
- 05. H.O.G. (House of God)
- 06. Fathers Perversion
- 07. Suicidal Savagery
- 08. Doomed
- 09. United in Deception
- 10. Decimated
- 11. Summon
- 12. Sweet Revenge