Forged in Fury

I entered the Krisiun musical camp far too late for my own good, though not through any lack of interest on my end. As a result, I didn't partake in their rise to Brazilian death metal prominence back at the dawn of the millennium and found myself getting a first-hand account of their approach with the previous outing, "The Great Execution", and if that was any indication then I'm only missing so much. I did enjoy what the album had to offer, and as far as palette-cleansing metal goes I've definitely heard worse, but it still felt a bit flat and only as interesting as their craft could possibly be. That's more on me than on the band, of course. Still, it had enough going on for me to see where they would continue to tread from there...

From where it stands, "Forged in Fury" reins in a good portion of the group's original flare and frenzy in favor of a slower and more drawn own method of musical torment. From my own limited engagement with the material it feels like the Kolesne/Camargo clan are still opting for a more simpler take on their particular metal blend, which in itself is fine as this, in turn, leads to a few things to consider; for one, the more mid-paced and chunky "stop-start" segments allow the tracks to breathe better and the collective efforts of the band to be heard versus a blinding windstorm of fire and noise. Even the production isn't half bad; despite having resident musical trash compactor Erik Rutan again at the helm and dials, everything is clear and able to be heard, if a bit thick with the guitar tone. As a result it's not an unpleasant album to sit through by any means, though there are only so many moments where it demands your full focus and attention (the fervent immediacy off tracks like ? and "Burning of the Heretic" , for example, offer plenty of flames-clad fun). I mean, you can only run through low B minor scales for so long until it starts to fade into mere background white noise, even if you can't help it.

But as I've said many times before, I've heard worse extreme metal out there, so if the worst you can do is be an effective yet inoffensive work of nastiness, then who am I to complain? And truly, I've not heard anything off "Forged..." that I would consider terrible by any stretch; at best, it's quite good where it counts, and at worst it's somewhat bland. But that said, the flatness and accessibility of the material is both a good and a bad thing, as while it prevents further listens from being such a blur that would leave you exhausted, it also starts to feel increasingly dull the more the album wears on. It's not so much an overt lack of ideas as it is said provided ideas only fleshed out so much and so far; for my money, a bit more exploration of the material, a more deeper unearthing of it all at hand, would make for a more enveloping listen, and as it stands it only offers so much in that regard before dimming. You know these guys can do better (I mean, look at everything up to "Ageless Venomous", or even "Bloodshed"), and more often than not you'll feel that twinge of expectation as this continues plodding on track-by-track and only slightly getting there. But hey, as I said, better to be vanilla than shit.

In the end, I wasn't all that impressed with "Forged in Fury" but I didn't dislike it either. I wouldn't say this is meant to continue the grand tradition of Krisiun's obvious supremacy in their given style, but merely just a simple musical treading of the waters. Here's hoping the next one down the line will do them/us the same amount of justice many have come to expect.

One of the most universally praised albums in all of metal history is... well not a Krisiun album. October Rust by Type O Negative is held in high regard by virtually every fan of the band and even people who couldn't really care less about their genre. It has a legendary opening track, with nearly 40 seconds of total silence before the band bursts out in laughter, introduces themselves, says they hoped you like the joke, and then the album starts. It's a shitty joke, to be perfectly honest, but I can't help but feel like Krisiun owes us something similar for this album. Before the first track truly starts, I want to hear silence before the band starts laughing and says:

"Hi, I'm Alex"

"I'm Moyses"

"And I'm Max"

*all together* "And we just don't give a shit anymore! Hope you enjoy this album we shit out without actually writing any songs for!"

Because damn, Forged in Fury is a fucking bore. I have a habit of lumping Krisiun in with the group including Cannibal Corpse, Vader, and Motorhead, where they really don't do anything new with each album, but they're so good at what they do that they don't really need to experiment with their sound. In truth, every Cannibal Corpse album sounds like "a Cannibal Corpse album", every Motorhead album sounds like "a Motorhead album", but every Krisiun album sounds like "Conquerors of Armageddon". For as consistent as the band is, it becomes more and more apparent with each subsequent album that they really blew their wad with that 2000 masterpiece. They really and truly only have three great albums, with Black Force Domain being one of the most unruly and insane albums released in the mid 90s, Conquerors of Armageddon laying the blueprint for their signature blend of high speed, groovy, and punishing stop-start riff onslaughts, and fluking out with Southern Storm basically being Conquerors but better.

Forged in Fury? Nah, this is pretty much interchangeable with any of their mid 00s albums. It's truly the sound of a band on autopilot, just going into the studio and doing what they know how to do, but not really applying themselves towards the goal of getting better with each try. It's like they figured out what they did best and just never bothered honing their skills. The technical skills and execution are serviceable enough, with their jarring shifts from frenzied blasts and bassy tremolo assaults to pounding, Bolt Thrower style grooving being just as capable as always, but none of these songs contain any riffs or breakdowns or vocal patterns or solos or memorable moments or anything to really distinguish themselves from each other. The album is a faceless blur of nothing-riffs. It's just not particularly interesting or well written, which is unfortunate because that's the hardest criticism to explain. There aren't any memorable blasts of intensity like the intro to "Combustion Inferno" or the main riff to "Sentenced Morning", it's just incessant tremolo abuse and blasting with no further thought put into it. I don't even really know how to elaborate further, every song sounds like the song before it, and they all sound like "Abyssal Gates" from fifteen years prior except not as hungry and exciting.

I think one of the biggest problems is simply that the songs have been getting longer as of late, with this album being nearly an hour long and having four songs break the six minute mark (with another one being within seconds of that cutoff). There simply aren't enough ideas at play to justify the songs being as lengthy as they are. You get every idea the song will introduce within the first minute and that's it, nearly every track could be a minute or two shorter and it'd greatly improve the album. This has been their issue for a while now, the three brothers just seem woefully incapable of trimming the fat. The best song is easily "The Isolated Truth", and it's unironically the shortest one (though the fact that it's basically just a rewrite of the stellar "Combustion Inferno" certainly helps its standing with me). In fact, the only two songs on here I'd ever see myself listening to again are that one and "Oracle of the Ungod", and it's for basically the exact same reason. They're the two shortest songs and they're the most interesting interpretation of their stop-start brutality that's dominated their sound for the past decade. That's it, they're well written and well executed versions of what the rest of the album tries to do but fails because it's too busy repeating itself.

I'm glad they've solved their production woes, as this is as heavy and thick as the previous two albums, but the actual content is disappointingly lacking. If Forged in Fury is the first Krisiun album you hear, then you'll love it to death. All of the ideas and quirks that have made the band relevant and respected enough for me to still care about despite thinking they're overall pretty meh are here like all the rest of the albums, but they're running on fumes at this point. Nothing breaks out, grabs you by the balls, and hurls you against a wall like "Ravager" or "Slaying Steel" did years and years ago. It's one dimensional, which used to be one of their greatest strengths, but it's now pretty heftily their biggest problem.


PS: "Milonga de la Muerte" is a cool acoustic bit, but it's stupid to end the album on what feels like an interlude as opposed to a true outro.

Originally written for Lair of the Bastard