Krisiun "Bloodshed" CD
[Century Media]
Hell yeah.  This inexpensive EP contains around 35 minutes of material for about $9, most of which is new, while the remainder consists of four songs from the band's debut EP, "Unmerciful Order", released over 10 years ago.  I have to say, the new songs are some of the slowest yet from Krisiun, and I'm loving that.  I've always been a fan of the band's diehard attitude and their pioneering brand of relentlessly fast Brazilian death metal, but the more they start to spice things up with a slightly slower pace there's a lot more feeling and breathing room in the songs.  It's definitely not slow or groovy material at all, but there's definitely a lot of added padding for dissonance and such in tracks like "Servant of Emptiness".  But rest assured: There's still plenty of blazing tremolo picking in songs like "Hateful Nature".  "Eons" is a noisy instrumental that's more of an interlude than anything (consisting entirely of guitar noises rather than many concrete notes), with "Voodoo" taking the instrumental road using clean guitars and a more laidback atmosphere before shifting into an unexpected chord progression that sounds very atypical of the band's prior work.  The tracks from "Unmerciful Order" are of course quite raw, with the sound dominated by drums so it's sort of hard to hear the guitar riffs.  The band's taste for high speed playing was clearly intact at that time, though some of the riffs do flirt with a thrashier side, and the vocals are much harsher.  The recording makes things pretty hard to sit through since the guitar tone is really muddy and almost impossible to decipher behind the vocals and machinated sounding percussion, but while flawed as songwriters back then there are still some cool riffs and solos.  The closing track is another new instrumental, reverting to the noisy landscapes of "Eons".  For some reason there's a fade to silence for three or four minutes before such textures seep back in, but whatever.  The recording for the new tracks was done entirely in analog and I actually read that they apparently did everything in one take as well (sans the added guitar lines, of course).  The end result is a thicker and slightly rawer (but effectively so) sound that gives them a lot more natural warmth than it does clinical precision - which, in my opinion, is great.  I'd gladly sacrifice some clarity if all of their material sounded this well rounded.  The drums are still somewhat clicky to a degree, but still definitely more dense and resonant than anything the band has done in recent years.  I quite like the recording all around.  The packaging keeps it minimal with largely black space and some spatters of blood with busy, grimy fonts that are kind of hard to read.  It looks a little plain and boring, though admittedly the embossed and glossy slip sleeve is a nice addition, and it's cool that they included a small image of the "Unmerciful Order" cover art inside.  The lyrics are still bleak and antichristian, though I honestly feel like they're dropping some cool lines these days, it's not all so over the top: "Heaven is a tale of this ungodly land, The savior is a lie - sworn to save what can't be saved..."  I'm definitely a longtime fan of these guys, and I always look forward to their new releases... especially now that they're consistently branching out and trying new things with each consecutive outing.  Nicely done.  These new songs definitely leave me hankering for a new full-length...
 (7/10)
Running time - 38:00 (approximately), Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Slain Fate, Servant of Emptiness, Visions Beyond, Infected Core]
Century Media Records - http://www.centurymedia.com

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