Kreator

Arguably the most influential and successful European thrash metal band ever, Germany's Kreator is also by far the most enduring. Like many of their European speed metal brethren.Kreator fused Metallica's thrash innovations with Venom's proto-black metal imagery, sparked it with Motörhead's balls-out velocity, and capped it off with the nihilistic outlook typical of heavy metal since the seminal days of Black Sabbath. Kreator's career also mirrored speed metal's rising and waning fortunes: building from strength to strength throughout the 1980s, only to fall on hard times in the 1990s. Now seemingly reborn in their third decade of activity, Kreator are certified worldwide superstars who still tour as widely and frequently as bands half their age -- now that's resilience. Originally named "Tyrant," and then "Tormentor," Kreator was founded in 1982 by vocalist/guitarist Mille Petrozza, bassist Rob Fioretti, and drummer Jürgen Reil (aka Ventor) in the industrial capital of Essen, Germany. They were still known as "Tormentor" when their first two demo tapes, one fittingly named "Blitzkrieg" (1983), and the other "End of the World" (1984), fell into the hands of thousands of heavy metal fans engaging in the era's bustling underground tape-trading network. Positive word of mouth soon attracted the attention of Germany's own metal start-up, Noise Records, which signed the newly re-christened Kreator to a deal and immediately put them to work on their first album. Recorded in just ten days at Berlin's Musiclab Studios, 1985's Endless Pain was a savage debut, but its crude thrashing quickly had the underground metal world a-buzzing with excitement. A second guitar player, Wulf, was hired for touring purposes, and with the group's reputation preceding them, lucky fans within the...