| Past Issues:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27
BACK
KRISIUN
The War On Carnage
By Alex Ristic
Those post-apocalyptic albums sure are coming out at a fast and
furious pace, aren’t they? Literally dozens of death metal
bands (and black metal—heck, there are even some power metal
bands who use those themes) seem to have a powerful obsession with
the end of the world, or at least how it comes about.
What is it about those themes? Sure, they’re interesting. And
yes, if you don’t mind being stereotyped they also fit the
metal credo. But if you know anyone in a death metal band, more
likely 90 per cent of the time they are not obsessed with senseless
destruction, nor are they themselves plotting the obliteration of
good old Terra Firma.
And yet, coming from Brazil’s Krisiun, through their fifth
album Works of Carnage, a blastbeat brigade of corpse commandos
are doing their best to tear your face off, with ripping riffs and
shredding arrangements, most likely coming closer to killing you
after one listen than allowing you to sit on your ass to enjoy it.
In their case, says drummer Max Kolesne, it’s not actually
a post-apocalyptic world they are writing about. They’re just
songs about today, but they point out, quite correctly too, that
you don’t need to look at tomorrow to see the carnage of yesterday
and today.
"Every time, since the beginning, we’ve written about
ancient wars, and we’re inspired by it, all that history, all
the wars that have happened in the world, since the beginning of
time, and even nowadays," says Kolesne, who over the phone
has a striking vocal resemblance to his brother Moyses. "So,
it was pretty much inspired by carnage, of all the wars which have
happened in the world. We live in a fucked-up world, and people
are killing each other all the time. It’s a brutal world, and
that really inspires us. Everything that happens in Brazil, like
crime, and people killing each other all the time—it’s
like a war going on everywhere—so that really inspired us.
The world is brutal and evil, and nothing is more brutal and evil
than man himself. The real evil is man, humankind."
The funny thing about Kolesne’s statements is that he recites
them in a matter-of-fact way, like destruction and carnage is an
everyday occurrence in his life. While that may be the case for
others, how many reading this story can actually say they’ve
been in a war zone? Or witnessed a murder right in front of their
eyes? There may be a dozen or two (that’s generous), but really,
for the vast majority of us, we get our carnage second or third
hand, from the daily news, or people reiterating the top stories
to us.
Yet, these themes of carnage proliferate, including on Works of
Carnage. Hell, every song on the album has to do with destruction
or death in some capacity, with perhaps the lone exception of the
instrumental "War Ritual." Oh, wait. Scratch that. Just
look at the title of the song, and read Kolesne’s description
of the mind-crushing tune.
"For the song we had the idea to make the instrumental almost
like a drum solo, and then we got inspired by the war [the U.S.’s
war on terrorism], the sounds of war, and the things which were
going on while we were writing the album. We got really inspired
by that. The drums, sometimes, just sounds like a war. When you
hit the snare really fast it’s like a machine gun, and the
toms are like bombing, and the kick drums are like a rumble. And
Moyses [guitar] had the idea to just play a lot of crazy stuff.
First, I did the drum solo, he added the guitars, and then later
we had the idea to add a few war sounds, like some machine guns
and bombs here and there. Basically it’s a war sound we were
going for."
And it’s not just today’s state of the world that interest
the brothers Kolesne, or bassist vocalist Alex Camargo. Try taking
a trip back through yesteryear with the song "Wolfen Tyranny."
"‘Wolfen Tyranny’ is about the Mongol empire, but
the way Alex wrote the lyrics he’s talking about the environment
they had in that time; the armies riding through the valleys, and
all that kind of stuff. He was just trying to show the places from
back in that time. How it was. The armies are ravaging, killing
and conquering, riding a thousand men together, in the fields and
the valleys—the valleys of death."
Sometimes, they do slow down the pace. After all, it would get kind
of boring if every song was about massive killing capacity. Sometimes
the dudes in Krisiun also deal death in a more intimate, one-on-one
fashion, like through the song "Murderer."
"That’s what man is; he’s a murderer, just killing
all the time—people, animals. But actually, the lyrics of ‘Murderer’
are inspired by professional killers; people who have to kill to
live—warriors, you know, stuff like that."
Even the album cover is not safe from bloodshed.
"We’re still working on it, but it’s some giant snakes.
It does look different from Ageless Venomous, but we’re always
with the snakes. The snakes are coming… They’re rising
from a big hole in the ground, surrounded by a big city, and there’s
a war going on. Lots of destruction, fire and death around. It’s
by a Polish guy named Jacek, but it’s done more by computer,
not like regular artists who are always drawing stuff."
Thankfully, their collective fixations on things having to do with
killing are only based out of curiosity, and besides songs that
deal with historical properties, for the most part they have to
do with being more of a narrator or observer, rather than partaking
in the ending of someone’s life. And even still, some songs
are from more of a fictitious point of view.
However, there is a very real war that the members of Krisiun are
a part of: the war against false musicians and metalheads. Perhaps
they do indeed want to kill their enemies, but at least they’re
willing to give them the chance to learn to use their instruments
first.
"Now there’s a lot of kids who just want to learn how
to play death metal, and they don’t want to learn how to play
the old stuff. And the old school is a great school. If you’re
a musician you have to know how to play the different styles of
music, from the ’60s and ’70s on. And every time we go
back to listen to the old stuff there’s always something new
to learn from them.
"We learned to play metal by listening to metal. When we were
kids we used to listen to a lot of stuff, like AC/DC, Motörhead,
Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, all the old metal, the old rock and
roll. And I think we pretty much learned how to play the basics
for metal music. First, we learned how to play simple beats and
rhythms, and then little by little we started to get more into the
fast shit, and later on we got to know bands like Venom, Slayer,
Metallica, and that really inspired us to do something more brutal
and faster. That’s the way we started to play; listening to
the old bands. And I think those roots are really important for
us."
There’s also the group’s own personal war on production.
Or rather, a war on the production of their previous effort, Ageless
Venomous. Although completely killer compositionally speaking, but
lacking in aural quality, especially in the drum department. As
editor Bromley has been known to say, "They sound like tin
cans."
"I think (Works of Carnage) definitely sounds much better than
Ageless Venomous. I think when we did Ageless Venomous we tried
to sound too clean, so we wanted to try something different, like
a dry drum sound, and with the guitars a little clean, and it sounded
kind of weird for a lot of people, and a lot of people didn’t
like that. Whatever, man. I think Works of Carnage, the production
is much better."
He continues on about the war-like campaign in the studio: "Let’s
say that, first, we had to do something different. We don’t
want albums to sound like Ageless Venomous, or Conquerors Of Armageddon;
we just have to do something different, look at our options. And
(the sound isn’t just different) on the drums, I think the
guitars are much more up front, they’re louder, and the same
with the bass guitar. There’s much more low end. I think the
drums sound a lot more natural than on Ageless Venomous. We had
more of a sound of the room, because we put all these mics on the
drums, to have a real natural sound. When I hit the toms, you could
feel the low end, and it was much heavier."
Whew. With all this talk of war, death, killing and murder, after
about 40 minutes on the phone, you start to get worried about these
guys. Like maybe, just maybe, they’re a little too intimately
close about the topics they spout on.
Leaving off cryptically, Kolesne doesn’t inspire us to think
toward the contrary.
"(Works Of Carnage is) a good album to listen to before you
kill somebody," he laughs.
|
