"Endless Pain"A sloppy, nasty album, though typical for a German speed-metal debut. :) For a long time I owned a CD which also included "Take Their Lives" and "Awakening of the Gods" from the Flag of Hate EP...except that the original "Flag of Hate" was replaced with the remixed version! (And I actually DO prefer the original!) Finally I managed to locate a "proper" copy of this CD.
"Pleasure to Kill/Flag of Hate"My brother owns a copy of this CD which contains the entire Flag of Hate EP, and for a long time I pressured him to sell it to me, with no success...well finally I located my own copy, and although it's missing the remixes of "Total Death", "Tormentor" and "Endless Pain", I guess I can live without them. Pleasure contains many prime tracks, very similar to Destruction, but much more grungy-sounding. "Riot of Violence" has some choice lyrics: "A man lies in the corner, covered in blood/Bloody wounds on his body, praying to his God/People pass him by, because they say/Why should we care about him, he will die today!"
"Terrible Certainty"This was one of the first Euro-thrash albums I ever listened to, and for three months straight I would play side one of the cassette during my daily commute to college...a great way to start the morning! The sound here is much cleaner and tighter than their earlier works (even though "Terrible Certainty" totally rips off the main riff from Slayer's "Kill Again".)
"Out of the Dark...Into the Light"Sort of a "teaser" EP that was released after the success of Terrible Certainty. "Lambs" is a cover of the Raven song, and "Gangland" (a Tygers of Pan Tang song, NOT the Iron Maiden song, as another Kreator webpage out there is claiming!) was the B-side on the "Behind the Mirror" single. The live stuff is pretty wicked.
"Extreme Aggression"A good album, though in comparison to their other works, it sounds a bit too clean and over-produced. I remember playing the track "Love Us or Hate Us" on my college radio show one night, oblivious to the fact that the first verse contained the line, "We don't give a FUCK anyway!" ...oops. :)
"Coma of Souls"Absolutely the best of all Kreator's albums. I caught the band live on this tour (in fact it was the last concert I went to for 5½ years) and they were phenomenal -- the first song they played entirely backlit in red, so all you could see was the band's black silhouettes surrounded in smoke...awesome! I also managed to catch a broken drumstick, with which I took great delight in stabbing people who stage-dived on top of me. :)
"Renewal"Yikes!! This album was a total surprise, and not a pleasant one either. The production is HORRIBLE, and lead vocalist Mille sounds totally hoarse and growly, completely different from their other albums! The sound borders on grunge-industrial, and a few tracks do stand out, such as "Europe After the Rain" and that strangely titled instrumental...on the whole, however, it was a letdown. (Their contribution to the second Judas Priest tribute album is passable, however.)
"Cause for Conflict"Haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but for the most part, it's the same pseudo-industrial mess that they slopped together on Renewal. There's an annoying 2-minute gap in the middle of "Isolation", followed by a long series of strange animal noises (many of which are identical to sound effects in Ultima Online...hmm I wonder where those came from??)
"Scenarios of Violence" (compilation)A "best of" package that I reluctantly bought for the two new songs, "Suicide in Swamps" and "Limits of Liberty". The good news is (on "Suicide", at least), the new sound is remarkably tighter and more focused, sounding a lot like the material on their subsequent album, Outcast. The live tracks were also a nice surprise, since they aren't listed as such on the track listing.
"Outcast"The band wisely decided to chuck the industrial sound and get back to what they do best -- hard, gutteral thrash. As a result, this CD is a HUGE improvement over their last two duds! The songs are mostly mid-tempo, and nothing here is as classic as "Toxic Trace" or "People of the Lie", but overall it's a worthy effort. (I wonder if the addition of guitarist Tommy Vetterli, from the recently disbanded Coroner, had any effect? Some of the music does sound slightly Coroner-ish...)
One strange thing...on track 10, there are two noisy glitches which sound like the master tape accidentally switched over to another song for about half a second. Not sure if it's a mastering defect or if they really meant for it to sound that way...sure is annoying, though!
"Endorama"Huh?? When the hell did Kreator become a piss-poor Megadeth clone? And I'm talking about the POWER POP phase of Megadeth, i.e. Youthanasia and Risk -- the songs are all mid-tempo and contain NONE of the thrashy energy they've become famous for! The first two songs don't sound so bad, but after that it becomes an excruciating listening experience (especially "Soul Eraser", GOD that song sucks!!) No wonder this CD's gone out of print and is getting increasingly hard to locate these days...
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