THE STORY BEHIND
PLEASURE TO KILL BY KREATOR
While The Bay Area conquered the US metal scene in ’86, a German trio had produced an anthem that’d help ignite Germany’s own thrash revolution
WORDS: DOM LAWSON
1986 WAS AN extraordinary year in the evolution of heavy music. With Metallica and Slayer releasing their respective masterpieces, Master Of Puppets and Reign In Blood, the thrash metal scene consolidated its reputation as an unstoppable force. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Europe’s metal militia were beginning to pick up the same kind of furious momentum, with Germany’s Kreator firmly at the forefront of things, alongside fellow countrymen Sodom, Destruction and Tankard. After releasing a raw and chaotic debut album, Endless Pain, in 1985, this teenage trio from Essen slowly began to realise that they were leading the charge for the European thrash scene.
“When we made Endless Pain, we thought that recording an album would be a one-off thing for us,” says Mille Petrozza, still Kreator’s frontman and creative driving force today. “Of course, we were hoping that people would like the album, but it was more like, ‘OK, let’s go into the studio and try stuff out!’ We didn’t know anything about production or how music could sound outside the rehearsal room. The first time I kinda realised that people actually liked what we do, it was when I went to a show – it was Venom, Exodus and Atomkraft – and we saw that this guy had a Kreator patch on his jacket. Suddenly we knew people had got the album and were enjoying it.”