AtomicCrimsonRush Speed. Aggression. Brutality. Lethal.

These are all words me and my mates used to utter listening to this killer album. It was so fast and extreme it really knocked everyone off their perch. The songs were chock full of nasty lyrics and the singing was gutteral and German accented.

The lead guitar work is incredible throughout, the drum blastbeats are deadly and above all the rhythmic riffs are always skull melting. It opens with wind howling, ethereal voices and sweet acoustics, then it breaks into the blazing Ripping Corpse. The sadistic lyrics are screeched out by Mille who thrashes the axes. Rob is great on bass and Ventor is a powerhouse on relentless speed drumming. Everythign is turned up to a blazing tempo as fast as i had heard, even as fast as Slayer. It was a very influential album for all these reasons and showed that Germany was capable of some extreme hardcore thrash.

Death Is Your Saviour is another speedy track, and it gets faster as it progresses. At times it sounds like a machine grinding, hence the term grindcore, and the lyrics are always about killing, death and brutality, so nobody took them seriously as a result, unless you were into the extreme end of thrash.

Pleasure To Kill was the ultimate classic from the album that they played live and had the crowd screaming back kill! i love the drum fills on this, and the way the riff chops and fractures with odd time sig shifts. This is as technical as they got in these early years. 1986 was a groundbreaking year for thrash with the rise of Metallica, Slayer, Onslaught, Exodus, Anthrax, Megadeth, Sodom and Kreator. These bands simultaneously crushed the glam metal scene. Destruction were even faster than Kreator but none would have the same impact as this album seemed to generate. One thing that stood out was the way they broke the music up with half time feels and very odd riffing. The lead breaks were brilliant too, but the vocals were nothing like anyone had heard, so gutteral and raspy. Riot of Violence has an awesome driving riff with lead guitar squeals. When I was into this thrash this was one of my favourites as it was not just breakneck speed but had some wonderful lead breaks and a powerdriving riff. It does speed up in the chorus but somehow the mixing allows one to hear every note.

The Pestilence has powerful drumming in the intro and then locks into a blitzkrieg of galloping riffs with extreme distortion before launching into high speed rhythms.

Carrion is an underrated track with a very fast lead solo intro over blastbeats and double kicking with aggressive speed. This is as furious as metal gets, definitely for the hardcore speed metal freak.

At the time I was into this metal I was actually to the point where I was beginning to mellow into a different style of music, but this was irresistible, and will be hailed as a thrash classic forever.

Mjöllnir One of the seminal albums of early death metal, “Pleasure to Kill” rips and tears its way into one hell of a murky metal masterpiece. Although the band are often thought of as thrash this album is nonetheless important in the development of more extreme styles. The influence is immediately present at the first taste of the manic tremolo picking and breakneck pace of “Ripping Corpse” following the deceptive and airy intro.

“Pleasure to Kill” feels like a more considered and focused extension of their debut, with drummer Ventor taking turns with Mille on lead vocals still. Although I wouldn’t call the sound mucky, it is still raw and satisfyingly unpleasant but with every neck snapping riff making its presence felt. The perhaps thin sound of “Endless Pain” has all but vanished. Ventor’s mad rolls and fills deserve mention, and his pummelling of the kit adds effective urgency to “Under the Guillotine” and the title track.

Though remaining on the same plain for much of the album’s runtime, I’ve got to say “Riot of Violence” is the centrepiece: the pile-on of riffs, dynamics and sheer aggression just build into a monolith. The following track “The Pestilence” is more elongated and begins with a slow and punishing introduction but can hardly resist that urge to mount an all out assault. Despite the relentless speed the album doesn’t wear out its welcome and remains far more engaging than the debut of Sodom for me (released the same year). The late 90s remastered edition has the “Flag of Hate” EP added as a bonus, which pairs the title track culled from the debut with two choice cuts showing off their development nicely. “Awakening of the Gods” must be heard!!

UMUR "Phantom Antichrist" is the 13th full-length studio album by German thrash metal act Kreator. The album was released through Nuclear Blast Records in June 2012. When the arguably most successful part of the unholy teutonic triumvirate (read: Kreator, Sodom, Destruction) release a new album it always creates quite the stir. Kreator are a highly respected band both among critics and fans, which has been especially evident after the return to their thrash metal roots with "Violent Revolution" in 2001. If the more experimental albums of the nineties seriously challenged their position, "Violent Revolution (2001)" and every album released since have received praise and have ultimately restored Kreator´s reputation as the leading German thrash metal act.

..."Phantom Antichrist" doesn´t do anything to challenge that position either as the music on the album pretty much follows the same formula that was initiated on "Violent Revolution". A return to the speedy thrash metal riffing of the eighties but with a more melodic almost melodeath like approach. In other words a mature form of thrash metal, that while it certainly is aggressive and hard edged, is also varied and as mentioned melodic. Tracks like "From Flood into Fire" and "Until Our Paths Cross Again" show the more varied "mature" songwriting that Kreator are also capable of while tracks like "Civilazation Collapse" and the title track are full throttle yet sophisticated thrash metal like we expect from the band. I´m well entertained throughout the whole album though, so we´re talking high quality all the way.

Lead vocalist/guitarist Miland "Mille" Petrozza almost exclusively sings using his characteristic sneering raw voice, but there are a few excursions into clean vocal territory on the album too.

The sound production is powerful, the musicianship is solid and at moments even excellent (take a listen to the skillfully played and melodic guitar solos by Sami Yli-Sirniö) and the songwriting strong and varied. In terms of standing out in the discography, I wouldn´t say "Phantom Antichrist" is a revelation of the band´s signature sound but rather a continuation of the style of the last couple of albums. Probably to the great joy of most fans of the band. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

Diogenes Like clockwork, German thrash metal kings Kreator are back with another slab of Teutonic metal for the masses. While their latest album, Phantom Antichrist, breaks a streak of album covers with malignant and disfigured faces on them (sort of; the dude’s pretty ugly, but it’s not an extreme close-up), the music features no such dip in quality. Of course it’s good!

Phantom Antichrist continues to develop the well-balanced, clean, and melodic thrash metal sound Kreator first adopted on their 2001 “revival” album, Violent Revolution. While there isn’t anything as melodic as, say, “To the After Burn,” Phantom Antichrist is not short on slick guitar harmonies, and they’re beautifully blended with the band’s trademark aggression and Mille Petrozza’s raspy vocals to form the modern Kreator style we know and love. Indeed, if you’ve heard the band’s past few efforts, there’s probably not much on this album that will surprise you, but that tends to fall by the wayside when the music is as tight and well-produced as it is here.

Frontman Petrozza has mentioned that Kreator went into the writing of Phantom Antichrist wanting to make their greatest album ever; while their landmark albums of the ‘80s will probably never be topped, it’s obvious that a lot of effort went into this. The transitions within the songs are absolutely sublime, as tracks like “Civilization Collapse” and “Until Our Paths Cross Again” trade melody for aggression so seamlessly that you actually have to, you know, pay attention to the music! There’s also a definite sense of urgency in the band’s playing, almost as if they know it’s their last album or that the world is ending this December (who actually believes this?) and they want to put one more solid notch in the thrash totem before they go out. This, again, goes back to the care put into Phantom Antichrist; just listen to the climax of “The Few, The Proud, The Broken” and tell me you don’t just feel every note in that anthemic guitar lead. Kreator have never been a band to mail in a performance (even when they didn’t really know what they wanted to play in the ‘90s), so this isn’t necessarily anything new, but they really hit the songwriting nail on the head this time around. The only thing on this album that I could definitely do without is the addition of clean vocals; for all his greatness as a harsh vocalist, Petrozza ain’t that good of a singer (at least, not anymore-who knows if he could have pulled it off 15 years ago), and the way they’re used seems awfully In Flames-ish. Please, keep the mumbling out of my thrash metal!

Thirteen albums into their career, Kreator shows that they can still bring it with the same intensity as their peers, even after going through enough sonic changes to put most other bands down for the count. I’d be lying if I said Phantom Antichrist is anything groundbreaking or surprising, but at the same time, it’s highly professional and executed well enough to appeal to almost anyone with ears. It should shock no one that this album is recommended, and will probably go down as one of the top thrash releases of the year.

UMUR "Out of the Dark... Into the Light" is an EP release by German thrash metal act Kreator. The EP was released through Noise Records in August 1988 and bridges the gap between the two full-length studio albums "Terrible Certainty (1987)" and "Extreme Aggression (1989)". The original vinyl version features 5 tracks while the European CD version includes 3 additional bonus tracks.

The first track on the EP is "Impossible to Cure", which at the time was a new original track by the band, and if you are familiar with the material on "Terrible Certainty (1987)" and "Extreme Aggression (1989)" you probably won´t be surprised by the aggressive teutonic thrash metal style featured on the track. It´s short, aggressive and effective. "Impossible to Cure" is followed by "Lambs to the Slaughter" which is a Raven cover track. It´s slightly more melodic but still pretty aggressive and it´s certainly delivered with fierce conviction.

The remaining tracks on the EP (including the 3 bonus tracks) are live recordings of early Kreator "classics" like "Riot of Violence", "Terrible Certainty" and "Awakening of the Gods". Taking into consideration that these tracks were recorded live in the late eighties, the sound quality is actually pretty good and the performance by the band is equally satisfying. They are not 100% tight and I hear a few errors here and there, but it´s nice to hear "real" live recordings from a metal act in the more extreme end of the spectrum that sound this good.

"Out of the Dark... Into the Light" is a very successful release to my ears and a reminder that the EP format was something that you took seriously in the eighties. All recordings on the EP were unreleased at the time that "Out of the Dark... Into the Light" was released and therefore the EP was a worthwhile investment back then and still is today as I haven´t found evidence anywhere that suggest that these tracks are available on any of the compilations that Kreator have released so far. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is fully deserved and I might even have set the bar a little low here.

Kingcrimsonprog This DVD from the Violent Revolution era captures Kreator at their best as the energetic virtuosos deliver a career spanning set of classic metal, mixing old and new together in a monstrous performance.

The first thing you'll notice is the unusual green filter over the video, and the fact that the show is split between two different venues, with half the songs live from a concert in Spain and half live from a music festival, the change over between shows being filled with short documentary sections with cameos from other Metal bands (usually drunk) and footage of the band getting ready.

If you can get past these facts, you'll find an amazing DVD to enjoy but if you can't stand that sort of thing you'd be better off buying Kreator's 'Live At The Pulse of Kapitulation,' DVD which is one entire concert, without interruptions or strange green filters.

Anyway the performance the band put on is incredible, delivering the songs with feeling and making the music heavy yet very clear. They make the songs from the nineties sound heavier and thrashier and the 80's classics Clearer and more modern sounding creating a even playing field for the material.

The production is pretty decent too, a nice deep kick drum sound, audible bass guitar and sharp chunky guitar sound. Mille is awesome as ever, barking and growling away like its still 1988. The DVD also contains a history section that mixes a very short documentary with all the bands music videos; nothing life changing, but definitely worth the one viewing.

There are also two bonus songs, the classic concert closing duo of 'Flag of Hate,' and 'Tormentor,' Live from With Full Force Festival although the camera work is much better and the visuals are brighter the sound is muddy and unclear so you will probably not bother with them all that often.

The main feature is as good as any metal DVD from the first half of the decade, and pretty much a no-brainer for any Kreator fan; Highlights include the aggressive and technical 'Reconquering The Throne,' and the infectiously catchy 'Violent Revolution,' as well as a storming rendition of the furious 'People of The Lie.' If you're into concert DVDs and into all eras of Kreator this is very much the DVD for you.

Kingcrimsonprog Kreator are a very important band in the Thrash Metal story, one of Germany's biggest ever bands and a bone fide classic act for metal overall.

This DVD is a fantastic reissue of the historic Live In East Berlin Concert, (which comes in Cd and DVD form here)with a documentary and an amusing horror video called Hallucinative Comas.

The Tracklisting is amazing, containing all of their classics such as 'Toxic Trace,' 'Flag of Hate,' 'Tormentor,' and 'Pleasure to Kill.'

The Band's performance is energetic and exciting; singer Mille interacts with the crowd on a regular basis. Ventor gets a Drum solo and also performs lead vocals on an excellent rendition of 'Riot of Violence.'

Kreator blast through songs like 'Some Pain Will Last,' 'Awakening of the Gods,' and 'Under The Guillotine,' furiously, performing the technically challenging and incredibly fast material with ease and flair.

Most important is the sound; for such an old concert the sound is amazing, much better than other DVDs of similar era concerts. The material is brilliantly mixed and available in 5.1 or stereo; with clear drums, chunky 'full,' guitar sounds and totally audible vocals.

The documentary is pretty interesting, describing the difficulty East German fans had even getting access to metal music, magazines or t-shirts; how the concert came to be, and the impact it had.

For a Kreator fan this cannot be recommended highly enough, the wonderful sound and excellent tracklisting make this one of the best Thrash Metal DVDs money can buy. If you want to hear music from the 'Terrible Certainty,' or 'Extreme Aggression,' albums played live then this is the DVD for you.