Kreator – With Full Force – Ferropolis, Germany – June 24, 2017

Kreator is a band I’d missed seeing at Hellfest because they played at the same time as not-to-be-missed Suicidal Tendencies with Dave Lombardo on drums, and I knew I would catch them here. This was a full-on pyrotechnic performance with themed digital backdrops, and if you’d blinked, you’d have missed something. I knew some of what to expect, so I had my camera ready for the high flames that periodically shot up! Some of my favorite photos came from having captured these balls of fire. I watched a technician fill up cannons with what I had thought to be fireworks, but what turned out to be strings of confetti, which shot up and landed on the crowd like wet noodles – some people made the best of it and used it as costume decorations.

Kreator from Essen, Germany didn’t travel very far for this performance. They’ve been around since 1982 and have been known for their thrash metal sound and the 1986 Pleasure to Kill album. They have just released Gods of Violence in January, which has actually debuted as #1 on the German music charts.

Kreator played “Phobia” off the 1997 album Outcast is catchy with its “Is there something after you / something after you” repetitive chorus about paranoia. Then they fast-forwarded by two decades to play the “Satan is Real” song off this year’s newest album, releasing the bursts of flames for each time the main line, “Satan is real” was sung, which was about 20 times in the 4-minute song. The raspy “Violent Revolution” off the 2001 album by the same name is a perfect example of Kreator’s unique thrash style – somewhat melodic, quite guitar-driven, heavily lyrical, angry, and raw.