Kreator

w/ Mortal Sin

Billboards, Melbourne – 23rd September 2009

More photos here.

The Kreator has returned, the epic welcoming words from Mille himself as Kreator took to the stage on the 23rd of September at Billboards. Their last Australian tour saw two shows at The Hi Fi but this year there was to be only one show for the Melbourne leg of the tour with the support of Mortal Sin. After much critical acclaim from their 2008 tour I found myself wondering if tonight’s show would live up to the expectations? Well upon arrival I was only certain of one thing, the Monash Freeway is fucked.

What Billboards lacks in speedy service (merchandise and bar) is most definitely made up for by the convenient parking lot located right next door, so it was easy to forgive the half hour wait in line to purchase a shirt. In perfect timing Mortal Sin began just as I was making my way to the stage and my face instantaneously turned from a grimace to a grin. From the very beginning I found these guys really entertaining and not because I was thoroughly enjoying the music but more because they put on a great live show. I was extremely surprised to see how many fans they had in the audience despite their mild success in the late 80’s, especially since a lot of the patrons were girls with terrible tattoos or boys who had recently raided their mum and dad’s closet for ill fitted clothing both of which would have no conceivable memories of the late 80’s, not to say that there wasn’t your fare share of over the hill women thinking they could still get away with spandex or ripped jeans (gees who called the fashion police, sorry).

Anyhow the band kicked off with a cheesy intro and pumped out tune after tune such as Blood Death Hatred, Dead Man Walking and the live debut of one of their latest tracks Deny. It was easy to come to the conclusion that this band had a lot of experience with live performance as they did an exceptional job at getting the best out of the audience. The music was really easy to listen to and I could only find one reason that could make me not want to watch any further, that the bass player looked like he belonged in Manpower. Male stripping aside Mortal Sin most definitely got the crowed pumped for the headliner of the night, zee Germans….Kreator!

After several minutes of ogling a bizarrely tailored denim vest more fit for a woman’s body than a blokes, the time had come for Kreator. Much like Cannibal Corpse I had not gotten around to giving the new album Hordes of Chaos a proper listen despite the fact that I do have it on my ipod, conveniently enough they opened with the title track and I thought it was…okay. I was much happier when they kicked into other tracks such as Phobia, Terrible Certainty and Betrayer to which Mille stated was the depiction of 99% of people in the world. Instead of the usual window backdrop there were images and film clips played at the back of the stage which I actually found a little distracting and I would have much preferred they weren’t there, but this in no way hindered the performance Kreator gave. I thought the sound on this particular evening was fucking spectacular, especially when concerning the drums and vocals. Mille took the audience on a bizarre journey narrated by what resembled a pissed off evil hobbit which explored topics of the afterlife – Voice of the Dead,  religion – Enemy of God, destruction – Destroy What Destroys You and the Pleasure to Kill.

One song I was really hoping to hear was People of the Lie or Agents of Brutality but alas it was not meant to be, however Coma of Souls more than made up for their absence. This was the last song before the inevitable walk off stage and wait to be cheered back onstage for the encore. However to mix it up a little only Marco Minnemann returned to the stage for a fairly epic and time consuming drum solo, it got off to a slow start but as it began to pick up it was really quite impressive as he threw in more cymbal and actual drum stick work than your usual run of the mill drum solo. What I also found equally impressive was their tight as fuck kick start back into song for Warcurse.

As the evening was coming to a close it was inevitable that the Flag of Hate would make an appearance and display the only break of character by Mille. Upon revving up the audience to convey their feelings of hatred and not receiving an adequate response he asked ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ ha ha, but in no time he was back on track and growling like Gollum (I cannot believe Gollum is not considered an error in Word) as the band launched into Flag of Hate and finally Tormentor which came to another really tight close.

Biggest perks of this show were definitely the sound, it couldn’t have been any better! The only let downs were the set list, but this is in my opinion as I would have liked to see more from Coma of Souls and at least one track from Cause for Conflict, but The Rolling Stones said it best….you can’t always get what you want. Nein.

Review by Holly McBride
Photos by Anwar Rizk