KREATOR ( Thrash Metal, Germany ) Vinyl Discography

Kreator's Line-up

  Miland "Mille" Petrozza is the fixed point in Kreator, the one face you do not need a caption for if you have spent any time around old Noise sleeves. Born in Essen on 18 December 1967, he started the band's earliest incarnation in 1982, back when it was still called Tyrant, then Tormentor, before the name Kreator locked in during 1984. On the early records he did not sing so much as spit and tear at the songs, which is exactly why those first releases still feel dangerous instead of merely old.

  People still bundle Kreator with Destruction, Sodom and Tankard as the so-called German thrash big four. Fair enough. But Mille was never interesting to me because of the slogan. He mattered because he stayed, kept writing, kept steering the band forward, and never sounded like he was polishing the past for applause. When I have an early Kreator sleeve on the kitchen table and the coffee is already going cold, Mille is usually the first thing that makes the whole package feel alive again.

  Jürgen "Ventor" Reil should not be filed away as some former drummer footnote. He was there at the beginning, shared vocal duties on the earliest material, left during the band's rougher years, and returned. More importantly, you can still hear when a Kreator track needs that Ventor shove: the blunt attack, the impatient swing, the sense that the drums are not accompanying the riff so much as kicking it down the stairs.

  That is what I have always liked about Ventor. He never felt decorative. Early German thrash had speed all over the place, but not all of it had weight. Ventor gave Kreator both, and he did it without sounding pretty about it. A cleaner technical drummer can impress me for five minutes. Ventor sounds like trouble, and on old Kreator records that is still the better bargain.