KREATOR, CALIBAN, ELUVEITIE, EMERGENCY GATE

Long live old school!

03.03.2009 Berlin/ Huxley’s Neue Welt (GER)

I love these kinds of concerts. I like the bands, that recording their albums and playing their shows sounding still perfectly and uncompromising. That’s why I visited at the beginning of this month the walls of Berliner Huxley’s to watch in action the legend of German thrash metal, the same like the neverending legend of metal on the world. It’s unbelievable, that are the bands like this one – KREATOR. Four men from Essen, inhaling the industrial smells of Ruhr basin and blowing with the coal dust of their noses outside… The most important is of course the form of these guys, that stays in spite of those all circumstances still unshaken, letting them to live in the iron health and write the stuff for the new albums like the last work “Hordes Of Chaos”. Everyone, who came those evening the same like me to the venue, wanting to convince oneself about the reality of this state, wasn’t probably disappointed, all the more because the number of thrashing admirers amounted in culminant moment about 500-600 people.

The gig of legend was preceded of course like always by the performances of other supports. I am not able to estimate, or the choice of them was accurate, but that’s not my glass of beer. I don’t want to mention in this place about the shitty quality all of them, but if I would have to be sincere, I prefer the other kinds of bands, especially when we have to do with so almighty gods like KREATOR. First of bands supporting the German monster absolutely didn’t liked to me. EMERGENCY GATE (anyway, the Germans too…) presenting something like bands of “melodic Sweden” has probably his fans and I don’t intend to criticize it, but the music of them, inspired mainly by the influences of IN FLAMES or SOILWORK can to be sometimes like for me… boring. That’s too much this stuff around of us, at least I see it this way. ELUVEITIE – very good band, but as I had nothing against to see them during the tours gathering the pagan/ folk hordes, here I would say, that they have found themselves… a little bit not in the rightful moment. I appreciate the whole work of Nuclear Blast, making a good work for their last album “Slania”, I can to understand, that this kind of playing has much of fans all over the world, but this time I wasn’t satisfied as I should to be. And maybe the music of ELUVEITIE simply palled to me? I don’t know, supposed if they play somewhere others and with somebody others, I will write the more positive words about them. CALIBAN (the next German support) – here I can’t to write anything. These modern sounds, being today very popular and beyond all of doubts a type of music artistry having a piece of commerce, stays something that absolutely doesn’t appeals to my heart, soul and mind. Anyway, observing the reactions of freaks, engulfing the every of rhythms producing by musicians of this band, I can only confirm a theory about the big popularity of metalcore trend. Perhaps I am not a kind of man who keeps abreast of times, but believe me – I don’t know myself why that’s it. I am simply old-fashioned, sometimes maybe even antiquated, so I think that would be better to pass to another subject and namely – to the show of old school metal legend, definitely more closer to all of my senses and all of nooks and corners of my dark soul.

Mille Petrozza and Jürgen Reil alias Ventor – just only the ones, who survived all times of recession, keeping this band alive in spite of so many historic upheavals. The line-up changes, different events, but first of all – 12 full-length albums, recorded just with the help of talent and composer’s skills. The last of them, titled “Hordes Of Chaos” and released in the January of this year is yet a fresh stuff of band, so nothing strange, that the promotional campaign of SPV gathered momentum shortly after the record’s appearing. To waste the fresh potential of strength and aggression, characterizing like always the new stuff of our lovely masters would be like a unforgiven sin, so to unleash the tour-war so soon as possible was the idea worthy of praise. Mille, Ventor, Christian and Sami are simply like the beasts, like the furious animals, attacking with their music even more dangerous than the flock of hundred fierce lions or the horde of thousand goshawks. They haven’t however the fangs, peaks or claws – they have their songs, biting and sharping almost the same painfully. When the first sounds of intro “Choir Of The Damned”, so known to all of us fragment, beginning the masterpiece “Pleasure To Kill” announced a total desecration, I knew that during the next minutes it will be really so and I didn’t make mistake absolutely. The guys came momentally to the matter of fact, unleashing by the title track of the newest work “Hordes Of Chaos” and following shortly after “Warcurse” the true thrash massacre of highest quality. And then was only that one what should to be, so in other words the series of knock-outs and shoots from all epochs of criminal activity: “Extreme Aggression”, “Phobia”, “Voices Of The Dead”, “Enemy Of God”… The return to new stuff by “Destroy What Destroys You” reminded about the masterful of latest record, but three next songs: “Pleasure To Kill”, “People Of The Lie” and “Coma Of Souls” accelerated so effectively the beating of my heart and blood-pressure in my veins, that the calling of ambulance was almost inevitable, ha, ha! Ah, anyway, wouldn’t be so beautiful art of death to die with the music of KREATOR in the ears? “The Patriarch”, “Violent Revolution”, “Terrible Certainty” and “Betrayer” could be probably for the many of gathered the last ones for this evening, because the musicians, thanking to the awesome audience, disappeared in the chasm of backstage. Why “probably”? Every girl and each boy being a true fan of Mille and his comrades still knows, that these guys have always something in their sleeves, crowning their shows by the treasures of whole discography. After the short pause, Mille and Co. comes back to the stage. Another one track from “Hordes Of Chaos” – “Amok Run” and then just only the surprises: “Riot Of Violence” (singing traditionally by Ventor), “Flag Of Hate” and “Tormentor”. Yes! Yes! Yes! It was really something gorgeous – it can to be confirmed not only by all of them, who came to watch the Hordes Of Chaos in attack, but first of all by my sweated shirt and aching body. Long live old school!!!