I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: November 14, 2022] Kreator

When Mercyful Fate announced their first U.S. tour in 23 years, I immediately grabbed a ticket.  I didn’t care who the opening bands were.  The fact that it was billed as a kind of double bill with Kreator was no big deal.  And we had support from Midnight, whom I’d never heard of.

I wanted to arrive late enough that I wouldn’t be too far back but also with hope that I didn’t have to sit through too much of Kreator.

I missed Midnight entirely–they sound like a band I would have enjoyed back in high school (solid Metal Blade music).

I had heard of Kreator, (they’ve been around since 1985, after all) but I really didn’t know anything about them.  Apparently they are quite legendary in the metal world.  Wikipedia even says

Pleasure to Kill is widely considered a landmark thrash metal classic, along with Master of Puppets by Metallica, Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? by Megadeth, Reign in Blood by Slayer, Eternal Devastation by Destruction and Darkness Descends by Dark Angel, all released in 1986.

But I’m guessing that since I didn’t get into this album back in the 80s, I never would.  I found the whole show, of which I saw about six or seven songs, too loud (so I’m too old).  And kind of samey.

The pit was taking up a large part of the floor and it was pretty big.  That was fun to watch and the crowd seemed to be really into them.

I found myself being rather turned off when they waved a “flag of hate” especially since hate is too prevalent lately.  Especially when he had the whole crowd screaming “Hate!” to see who could be louder.  And “pleasure to kill” also seemed to be rather unfortunate given, well, everything.

So, yeah, I was glad when the set ended and we could press forward to be close to the stage for Mercyful Fate.

Markit Aneight had a video of one song

1. The Patriarch [recording]
2. Violent Revolution ∇
3. Hate Über Alles ⊗
4. Satan Is Real ♦
5. Awakening of the Gods (intro only) ♣
6. Enemy of God ¥
   Mars Mantra [recording]
7. Phantom Antichrist ¶
8. Hordes of Chaos (A Necrologue for the Elite) Ψ
9. Strongest of the Strong ⊗
10. Flag of Hate ≡
11. Pleasure to Kill ⊕