Kreator - Gods of Violence

Death Angel showed us last year that thrash metal, while a more relatively archaic form of metal in this millennium, still has convincing creative devotees capable of pitting the less extreme genre up against modern, eviscerating death metal, and holding its own, and Vektor, last year, showed us in their most captivating display yet that thrash can evolve and be taken a still highly relevant force in metal. With so many thrash titans remaining prolific into this decade, some convincing and some not so much, it creates a series of dynamic spectra, from stubborn classic sound adherers like Overkill to innovators like Vektor, along which Kreator was bound to fall with this release and in their career.

After listening to Gods of Violence a few times with not much in the way of expectations for greatness or garbage (having found their last album less than exciting), I found myself much more pleased than I was with the generic boredom that Hordes of Chaos contained. This new album doesn’t really do much to push Kreator into new territory, but does certainly find them playing to their strengths and succumbing only to a few pitfalls typical of the thrash they play.

To quickly glaze over some of what I thought were general weaknesses on the album, the lyrics all throughout are full of usual thrash nonsense about death, war, violence, Armageddon, etc. and occasionally make some of the songs a bit of work in trying to block the words out to focus on what’s backing them instead. The pacing hardly ever deviates from the average thrash pacing, giving the album a level of homogeneity that becomes taxing when the album reaches songs with fewer outstanding motifs like “Lion with Eagle Wings” and “Hail to the Hordes” (except for that sweet power-metal-esque intro). Some of the major-key shifts, while characteristic of traditional early thrash metal, actually do more to disrupt the apocalyptic thrash metal feel of the album than to enhance any other connection to old-school thrash. Revolutionary ideas were, granted, clearly not a goal during the construction of the album, but there are few surprises in structure or phrasing on the album, but it’s an album full of no-gimmick, honest thrash that’s meant to give the metalheads of this year a taste of the what dominated the 80’s and 90’s.

And at that job, Gods of Violence does a more than adequate job. Mille’s vocals hardly sound aged at all, skillful and snarling for the record’s entire 52 minutes, and they are exactly fitting for the music behind him and its purpose. The guitar work is spot-on and memorable for the most part, the drumming and the bass providing a stable web with each other to help keep the songs cohesive and giving each instrument a tasteful time to shine. Indeed, there are many memorable moments on the album, some of my favorite being the key-change at the end of “Satan Is Real” (despite its ridiculous lyrics), the infectious drum pattern on “Army of Storms”, and the impressive vocals on “Hail to the Hordes”.

All in all, I don’t really have much to say about the album other than that it’s a solid entry for thrash this year to help sustain the relevance of its traditional form and that I was pleasantly somewhat surprised with how much I liked it. Even if I don’t listen to it as frequently as some other releases from this year or recently, I can definitely see myself continuing to enjoy it when I do put it on in the future.