Instigators

Back to the very beginnings of this multifarious outfit, to the late-80’s when the fascination was with just one thing; thrash till bash, or bash till thrash, and sometimes till death. The thing is that we have Alex Krull at work here, so there must be some stylistic surprises and twists served, outside the already mentioned ones… but more on those later.

So Atrocity started their career as a vehement old school thrash/proto-death team, nothing even remotely original or visionary, think a mix between the early exploits of Incubus and Kreator, the shorter material (“Hipocrisy”, “One of Us”) furious bullets with overt deathly pretensions, easily some of the earliest examples of prime death metal fury on German soil. The longer tracks hold thrash in high esteem, “Instigators” instigating a sizzling pogo with its fast rhythms and looser hardcore-ish attitude; whereas “There’s No God” shows some covert technical prowess with a wider array of riffs and tempo-changes by keeping the high-speed excursions circulating for most of the time. Oops, I nearly forgot the surprise, “Klimsch” is the title, a very brief grindcore atrocity (no pun intended), smacked at the end to scare away the complacent and the squeamish, this piece a probable leftover from the guys’ very first incarnation Instigator, when they reportedly played pure non-contaminated grind.

Nothing revolutionary on display yet, right as rain thrash/death, with a teeth-pulling grindcore “dessert” thrown as a finale, Krull shouting, semi-shouting, semi-reciting, and actually trying to sing at times, showing bigger vocal prowess at this early stage. Said prowess didn’t become synonymous with the band’s overall performance with this first stint, and in their desire to paint themselves with it from top to bottom, they followed up with the “Blue Blood” EP a few months later, a messy incongruent concoction of influences, with death and grind still roaming around proudly without producing a very positive impression, with thrash nearly completely phased out.

That’s why it was near-miraculous the guys’ ascension to the very top with the debut, and even though they stayed there for a very short while, it was beyond clear that Germany got talent in spades, and not only within the classic thrash and power/speed metal pools. Later the band spread their wings much more widely, accommodating nearly everything spawned under the metal banner (and not only), still trying unexplored shades and motifs some 32 years down the line. Instigators of something brand-new on the music front they’d hardly become again, but it’s highly unlikely for another blut… sorry, bloody disaster to befall us, either… we have Krull’s word on that.