No Click – Drumtalk Interview with Krisiun Drummer Max Kolesne

Drumtalk sat down with Max Kolesne this past February to have a serious talk. Actually, it comes across more as Max sitting the metal drummers of the world down to have a talk about keeping it real.

Krisiun is a legitimate family band. Made up of three brothers (no, one of them isn’t Alfred Molina), the Brazilian trio has been at it since 1990. That’s almost 25 years of no-tricks brutality. And not once has the band played or recorded to a click track.

That’s a result of the band practicing together constantly and a desire to maintain their identity in a world of samey-sounding, overly mechanized drumming and robotic metal bands. They don’t want the music to sound perfect; they want it to have character. It’s a bold move, and I think it’s paid off. With no copy and paste or easy editing, they are driven to play better and better to get the take in real time.

I’m not sure what he means by “skank beat”, but apparently Slayer does it a lot. I presume he’s talking about the two-step, D-beat, thrashy kind of fast punk beat. Maybe punks are called skanks in Brazil? Makes sense to me, although I’ve meet some pretty dirty metalheads in my day too.