Interviews : Kreator

After four long months since the North American release of Kreator's latest album, "Enemy of God," the band has finally made it across the ocean to tour the United States through April and May of 2005.

The legendary German thrash band has been rattling heads since the debut of their now classic 1985 album "Endless Pain." Now, 20 years later, the band's new album, "Enemy of God," has the German foursome traveling stateside to promote the album alongside Vader.

With a brand new album under their belts and plenty of dedicated fans foaming at the mouth to see Kreator live and in the flesh, I caught up with Kreator guitarist and vocalist Mille Petrozza to talk about the band's latest album, "Enemy of God," as well as the state of metal in the U.S., and the evolution of Kreator throughout its 20+ year career.

The thing that's interesting to me is the evolution of Kreator in their 20+ years together. Can you talk about the Kreator sound back in the early 80s versus what they've become now? Is there an evolution there?

There is an evolution, that's for sure, but I think it's just a natural thing when you grow up and you've been playing music for 20 years. When we did our first record, we were still in school...little kids. We didn't know what to do, and we couldn't handle the situation of being in the studio. Obviously the first couple records sound very chaotic, but have a certain vibe because of that.

A lot of people tend to say, "Oh, why don't you do something like 'Pleasure To Kill' or 'Endless Pain'?" But that's not possible, because at the time, we were just teenagers...after 20 years, how can you just ignore all the things you learned on guitar and be sloppy again? That won't work.

We're basically doing the same thing as when we started, just a little more organized and ... a lot tighter, of course. And the concept of the band has changed. We started out as a band that had satanic lyrics and bizarre songs about stuff like vampires. Now ... we've found our own way of expressing ourselves lyrically, which is not the same as it used to be back in the day.

It's still very much influenced by that of course. We look at things from, not a pessimistic, but a more realistic point of view, where you can criticize things rather than just saying things are good they way it is.

That's something I wanted to talk about...There's a certain tone to the new album, 'Enemy of God.' I don't know if vengeful, but it seems like there's some sort of cynicism. Is that a conscious decision, or is that just something where you look at things and say, "This is how they are, this is how I'm going to sing about it?"

Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of the lyrics have to do with my personal opinion on a couple of things that are happening in this world at this time.

I'm not trying to preach or anything, and I'm not trying to force my opionion on others, which would be very bad. I hate when people do this. I'm just saying, "Ok, if you want, you can check the lyrics out and see what I think about certain things." But if you don't, you can just enjoy the music...

I'd rather have people that read the lyrics, of course, because I've put so much work into them. And, you can get a lot more from the music when you read the lyrics and have the whole treatment, really.

Basically, I'm happy when people appreciate the music and don't give a fuck about the lyrics, that's fine to me. That's fine. But I'd rather have them look at the lyrics, because I've put a lot of effort into them. That would be cool, but whatever.

It sounds the Kreator of the last couple years has been influenced by melodic death metal with all the guitar harmonies. Is that right?

A lot of people think we're influenced from the Swedish scene, which is not really true, because we might just have the same influences as those bands.

When it comes to guitar harmonies and stuff like that, we're very much influenced by bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, and I think that's where the Swedish death metal bands get their influences from.

On the other hand, this is definately the most melodic version that you can ever hear ... Kreator has added a lot of melody to their sound ... to have more variety, and make it more interesting. If you just go full speed ahead all the time, it's getting boring. There's nothing more boring than bands that play fast all the time. To me, there's no dynamics if you do that.

I use the whole book for songwriting...I use the melodic bits, I use the slow, moshing bits and everything to make the whole picture, like the way the songs come out at the end of the day, more interesting.

Going from there, I have a couple things about the new album, 'Enemy of God.' Michael Amott from Carcass and Arch Enemy fame has a solo on "Murder Fantasies" on the new album. How did that work out?

I've known him since Carcass. The way this happened was just very easy.

In the studio, I just had a mental block. Andy [Sneap (Nevermore, Napalm Death, Arch Enemy)] was not really losing his nerves, but every idea I had for a solo in "Murder Fantasies" he was like, "No." And after a while, ... he suggested we should call up Michael from Arch Enemy. And I was like, "Yeaaaah, do it!"

And that was all ... I didn't have to work on that anymore, and Michael did a great job. It was really easy. We sent him the tapes, and he sent them back with the solo on it.

I think it's a nice little thing ... it adds something to the sound.

Yeah, a different kind of signature sound.... Also, you've got the video for "Impossible Brutality," on the SP version of the new album. What was the deal with that?

We always want to ... With every album we've released, we've had a video, so we wanted to do one for this, and another one, and maybe another one.

You know, videos are always a tricky thing. I mean, you look at a video, and you think, "What does this have to do with the lyircs? What does it have to do with the song?"

I always just give the director just the lyrics to the song, and he can come up with something himself. So the video is kind of like, "Ok, Kreator is playing in a bar, and there's people watching the world come to an end...you know, like wars and everything." ... Which is okay.

It's very hard to make good videos ... You know, as a metal band, it's almost not worth it to spend all the money on those videos. If you want to have a real, real good video, you need the money for three albums that you could record with that money, and then come up with a good video. Then nobody's playing it.

You mentioned how nobody plays it. At least here, MTV kind of got their head together and are playing "Headbanger's Ball," and Fuse is, too. What is your take on the rise in interest in heavy metal, especially over here [in America]?

It's good that way, because it seemed for a while in the 90s with the grunge invasion, nobody was interested in metal, and it was all of the sudden not cool to be into metal. It's like, "What the fuck are these people saying?!?"

I think nowadays, it's more you're into metal ... the mall metal, you know the Slipknots and the Disturbeds or whatever, and you can still enjoy the tradition stuff. This is how it is in Europe. You can be into anything, and just enjoy Iron Maiden as much as you would enjoy KoRn.

I think I'm the same way, if there's a good song, it's a good song. That's the good thing about KoRn, that made the whole metal sound popular again. So, people are always complaining about them being so commercial or not true or whatever, but it helped the whole metal sound, in my opinion. Having bands like Slipknot playing really heavy stuff kinda helped the whole scene a little bit.

It's still not as big [in the States] as it is in Europe. I think that's because everything is so far away, and it's very hard to get the information spread.

What is the difference for a band that came from Germany when they come over here? Do you ever run into the situation where you're playing to 30,000 over there [Europe] and you play to 1,000 over here?

Even worse...(laughs)

Over here, you sometimes play to very little audiences. In certain areas, there's just not many people that listen to this kind of music. And if you're lucky, they all show up. If you're lucky, those 3...400 people that are into this kind of music come to the show. If there's another show in town, or they just don't have the money, or they just didn't know about the show, sometimes you play to half of the amount of people that like metal music in a certain town, in the middle of nowhere, wherever you are.

In Europe it's easier ... In every country, it's lot smaller, you know. In every country, it's the same magazines and the same ways of advertising a show ... and a lot more people are coming to the show. Here it seems like unless you're the 'flavor of the week' band, it's very hard to promote a show.

To wrap it up, what's on the plate for Kreator. You're just starting this tour, but what after this in general?

We're having festival appearances in Europe. We'll be in a couple of the big festivals over there. Then we'll be in Africa for one show in Casablanca. We're headlining a festival there. Then we'll go to Japan and Australia. Then we'll come back to the States, we want to come back either this year or next year. We want to try and get on one of these festivals. We'll see what happens.

We'll keep coming over here, it's a challenge for us.

With a live show like the one they threw down in Omaha on April 14, 2005, it is a bit of a question as to why Mille Petrozza would find the States a challenge.

Mixing theatrics, atmopsheric lighting, and a collection of classic Kreator cuts and a few new ones, Kreator's live show is one that shouldn't be missed now ... or ever.