Krisiun
Arise From Blackness

As They Call Me Death opens 'Arise From Blackness' with a diabolic nightmarish roar my sleeping cat reacted by flying to her feet and gazed around worried in order to find the source of this horrific noise… and I share her reaction - this grunt and all that follows in anything but nice, calm and beautiful - it's really fucking terrible!

A few months before Krisiun released this demo compilation, Evocation did a similar compilation on their demos and the similarities betweens these two bands and these two releases does not end there. First of all They are both released by Century Media, both albums gives us dark black or death metal with a quite unflattering production and both album sucks more than a Hoover Conquest 18" Model #C1810020 vacuum cleaner - which is a device sold for around $750 US dollars and has an amazing sucking power and a 7.0 motor amp. And the fact is that I personally rather hear the sound of that Super Tuff Nylon fan in the Conquest for 40 minutes than 'Arise From The Blackness' because 40 minutes would be enough to get at least about half of my house clean, which would be much better than hearing 'Arise From Blackness' from start to finish.

It's not that I don't understand why you release your demos - not only is it a funny thing to do, but also a way to give your fans something more. And the record label also get a chance to cash in a few bucks - or at least that's what they think (but I bet if they count their costs for promotion, album cover, putting it all together and making it available to buy anywhere and everywhere they'll probably at best break even). But I there's nothing that either I or anyone else can say to make record labels, artists or fans decide about what they want and should do: buy, make or brake the album - who am I to decide and who actually cares what I think anyway? However, even though my opinions probably are as stupid as ducks and no one cares what I think, Hallowed do have a pretty noticeable voice within hard rock and plenty of readers and I guess people mostly come to get a laugh or two - something that is very easy when my cat reacts they way she does but very much more difficult when you play this album.

So what is it that makes it so bad? Well, I shall paint you a canvas of how 'Arise From Blackness' actually sound. It's like a 25 feet high and 20 feet wide canvas that's completely covered in different shades of black except for a 7x8 feet big plump of something gooey and grayish in the middle. That gooey grayish thing in the middle is a pool of bile that I've just puked on the painting because I got so sick of this shit I'm hearing. Black is a colour that can't be shaded, which means that this "different shades of black" is a paradox in the same vein as intelligent Americans and decent people - a description of something that just isn't possible. And a Krisiun with layers, levels or shades (describe it whatever way you want it) is as impossible as saying there are flying elephants that fly by flapping their ears - you're describing a fairytale at best. This Krisiun release is so bad you get sick of it and vomit all over - but they are also so bad that it's a waste to throw up anything of content, hence you're just puking bile.

But how come I think they are so bad? What is it with this music that stinks that much? Well, one big reason is that their vocalist sounds like someone stat has stuck his head down a mountain of open garbage bags and has got a dish cloth stuck in his mouth that before it was trashed had cleaned a dozen of toilets and this makes the vocalist guy puke unstoppable - something the band then has recorded and putted on this album. The guitars are then recorded from the third or fourth basement floor through the walls and roofs and floors - or at least that's how it sounds, like something very distant and really struggling to get through the wall of noises from drums and bass, which both seems to be stuck on the same hundred of a second which is then repeated in to infinity, kind of like it could sound back in the days when CDs got stuck in a scratch or something on a boom box or stereo (kids - look it up, they were common devices a few of years ago). What you can hear of it I think the solo guitars are the most interesting thing on the entire album, but everything else - like the rhythm guitars - are just monotonous and completely uninteresting (and as a matter of fact also pretty difficult to hear).

I can summarize my experience from this Krisiun demo by saying a few simple words that are easy to understand: horrible, worthless and completely unnecessary. I can't find any good reason anywhere on this album for anyone to want to hear it. I just can't see what anyone could possibly like on this album because it's just so bad all the way through. Terrible production, stinking music and a completely rubbish singer. Except for last years 'The Great Execution' I haven't heard any Krisiun album released after these demos was originally recorded and since that album got a two out of seven they've obviously become at least a little bit better even though it's difficult to imagine how anything this bad was possible to make so much better they could improve from the lowest possible score when you hear this. If Hallowed had a negative scale too and not just a positive I've given this album seven negative points because it's just such so horrifically bad, but since we don't I have to give it a positive score, which really feels wrong despite it being the lowest score I can give. This is without doubt one of the worst albums I've ever heard!

HHHHHHH