ABOUT KREATOR
Decades into their game-changing career, German metal legends KREATOR find themselves more successful and influential than ever. They’ve stuck to their guns, weathered the trends and outlasted their peers – never once wavering from the ferocious noise that excited them as teens. If anything, that thirst for sonic warfare is just as strong, if not stronger, today. Where others have suffered from creative malnourishment and artistic uncertainty, something which even metal’s biggest and best are prone to, KREATOR have always charged full steam ahead – thanks to the red-eyed conviction and fearless determination of founding singer and guitarist Miland ‘Mille’ Petrozza. On 1985 debut Endless Pain, the Essen innovators created the template for extreme noise to come, fusing elements of thrash and black metal in ways that had never been heard before. Their sophomore album of the following year, Pleasure To Kill, became one of the landmark albums of 1986 – making metal history alongside key releases from Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth. And onwards they marched, bringing hellish anthems to the masses in every album that followed, with a track record few could ever rival.
The last decade has been a particularly exciting time for the group, with 2012’s Phantom Antichrist proving how they could embrace modern production techniques and move with the times without forsaking the underground spirit and defiance which made them a household name in the first place. Its successor, 2017’s Gods Of Violence, saw them topping the German charts for the very first time in their career, a feat virtually unheard for a band of such thunderous intensity. Returning this year with fifteenth opus Hate Über Alles – which marks their first studio album with Frédéric Leclercq (ex-Dragonforce, Sinsaenum) on bass, joining Mille, guitarist Sami Yli-Sirniö and drummer Jürgen ‘Ventor’ Reil – the metal titans are once again channelling an unholy heaviness strong enough to tilt the earth off-axis.
Conquering and destroying in the way only KREATOR can, Hate Über Alles will undoubtedly sit proudly amongst the finest metal releases of this year. And so onwards they march once more…
