Slayer set the benchmark for hellish, uncompromisingly nasty 30-minute albums in 1986 with the masterpiece
Reign in Blood, and for years, many of the band's followers scurried like hyenas to the picked-over death/thrash/speed metal carcass looking for a scrap of the band's creative inspiration. That being said,
Krisiun's fifth album,
Works of Carnage, offers 32 minutes of brutally savage death metal that is, like many albums and bands in the genre, notable for its musicianship if not for its originality or songwriting ability. Here, the Brazilian trio has pared down its arrangements to two- and three-minute blasts of disorienting, whirlwind guitar riffs, double-bass drum battery, and graaarghh! vocals, while still maintaining the overall early-'90s Floridian death metal worship (specifically,
Morbid Angel and
Deicide) of past albums. With four of the album's dozen tracks being throwaways -- there are two
Trey Azagthoth-ian guitar-solo widdles, an instrumental "Outro," and a cover of
Venom's "In League With Satan" -- there isn't much left to analyze, and individual songs rarely, if ever, rise above the din.
Krisiun's breakthrough release, 2000's
Conquerors of Armageddon, was impressive at the time of its release for adhering convincingly to the gory, glory days of death metal, but
Works of Carnage finds the band treading water creatively. The album is, to use a tired cliché, a competent exercise in brutality, but those looking for a fresh and exciting death metal release will be disappointed with the disc's unrelenting, and increasingly uninspiring, method of attack. ~ John Serba