Kreator

MCMLXXXV – MCMXCII: Past Life Trauma (Noise)
by Scott Hefflon

Greatest hits from 1985-92 and four rare tracks to boot, whoo-woo! Kreator and Slayer were always my favorites, basically the fastest half-steppin’ evil shredders of the time, and while both have long since stopped mattering (following instead of inventing’ll do that to you), this collection is from the dirty days, including the very beginning when all but crusty grinders and die-hards will think they kinda sucked (basically, they were young and not very tight and the drummer was just plain erratic), but this is the stuff that changed things and defined something. Simply put, if you missed out on this stuff, here’s a decent way to catch up. And if you never bothered to get the best Kreator releases on CD, this might save ya the trouble. Me? To this day I have Terrible Certainty on vinyl, cassette (in the car, just for the added boost on long trips), CD, and mp3 (figured I’ve paid for it enough times and if I wanna get lazy and just click a file instead of fingering my archives, that’s my goddamn right). Some still argue that the definitive album is Extreme Aggression (I think it was on Epic and had a moody photo instead of the classic cover art), but I maintain that rebel yell shit like “Love Us Or Hate Us” is just too self-conscious teen anthem and Priest or Ozzy might stoop to such statement-making, but after glorious carnage like Pleasure to Kill and Terrible Certainty, dude, that’s just pandering to the whims of label lackeys who’ll be making shitty career calls for some other band long after you’ve made the mistake of listening to them.

18 tracks in all, four of them live/rare, and the booklet is a careful cataloging of who was in the band at what time, what album each song is from (and what year it was released, nice touch), lyrics, photos, posters and rejected artwork, and a little blurb by Mille on why each song’s included in this best of. Get this.
(1453-A 14th St. #324 Santa Monica, CA 90404)