Pleasure to Kill

What a huge, monumental disappointment this was. For an album so highly regarded, I expected so much more from this than what was on offer, because this CD only serves to demonstrate how far Kreator have come from what I now realize were very humble beginnings. This brand of prototype thrash does have its place, but what is on display here is groaningly outdated and almost totally irrelevant. There are 1 or 2 good moments on ‘Pleasure to Kill’, but a “timeless classic” this most definitely is not.

Case in point, the intro, ‘Choir of the Damned’, is an embarrassment, with its clumsy guitar work tripping itself up over poorly chosen pseudo harmonic scales. This honestly sounds like a learner practising a guitar lesson, yet after the retarded guitar finally comes to a stuttering end, ethereal keys and acoustic guitar work founded from actual chords seep through, which is the first thing that can be gleaned from this CD; the songwriting and ability of the band is in no way up to the standard needed to communicate the vision of the album, because some of the ideas expressed on ‘Pleasure to Kill’ could hold a lot of potential if they weren’t so badly executed.

We go into ‘Ripping Corpse’ which, after a promising intro, thunders into a world of musical confusion. The band are out of time with each other, no one seems to know the meter... it feels amateur, which is not something you expect from one of the most revered bands in thrash metal. When they finally manage to sort things out and bring some coherence to the song, it’s… OK. Yeah, it’s an alright riff, but let’s be honest, it isn’t groundbreaking, is it? The solos on this song (and indeed, entire album) are truly grating, because every single one of them is nothing more than one big chromatic beehive of randomly chosen notes, many of which are audibly mistimed or poorly played. They’re too wild to be interesting, and in the end you just want to swat them away like the flies buzzing around the proverbial piece of shit that they are. How people aren't levelling the same argument towards Kreator that they love to burden Kerry King with I have no idea.

Most of the actual music on ‘Pleasure to Kill’ lingers between being close to not bad and totally boring. Essentially, the bulk of material is a bunch of stereotypical mish-mashed tremolo riffs with fast drumming and frantically barked vocals, all of which just don't seem to connect with each other at all. None of the elements seem to make any attempt to compliment what everything else is doing, its just "right, you play fast, I'll do something like this, you do some aggressive vocals or something, and you do something over that", which some might consider a reliable formula, but its one that comes pretty cheaply as far as actual music goes.

Things only really start to pick up around the title track, which doesn’t really produce anything different musically, but just has a more together feel about it. The elements that were so self corrosive before somehow begin to work in each other’s favour; the riffs on show have a bit more impact, and the little hooks are more tightly fastened to the drum fills. The solos are still complete rubbish, but there is a pretty cool mid-paced section on this song that does get my attention.

And therein lies the key; when Kreator SLOW DOWN a bit, then the more memorable riffs slowly come drifting through. ‘Riot of Violence’ actually sounds like it has been rehearsed a bit before recording, each instrument combining and contributing towards a complete whole, as opposed to just playing really fast without any real end goal in sight. Even the vocals, that have sounded hurried and at times breathless up until this point, manage to carry some weight at last. Without doubt one of the best songs on this CD.

This is where anything remotely valuable in the way of songwriting ends. ‘The Pestilence’ is 6 long minutes of musical shit. When I saw 6 minutes I was dreading the “progressive” direction that I had assumed the song was going to take, but I was wrong; it was literally six minutes of exactly the same pointless thing over and over and over again. ‘Carrion’ has all of its good moments shot down in flames by those fucking solos, and ‘Take Their Lives’ demonstrates that early Kreator can be boring and uninspired even when they slow down, and ‘Flag of Hate’, try as it might, just can’t recapture an interest in this album that to be honest was lost a long while back.

Raw vocals, check. Raw production, check. Fast riffing and pummelling drums, check. So they’re playing thrash metal, then. But just because they’re doing thrash right does not mean they are producing anything of musical worth. This won’t be getting many spins at all from me I’m afraid, which is a real shame seeing as I really wanted to be blown away by this CD. My advice would be this: ignore this album entirely, unless thrash of the most mindless variety is what you want. For Kreator, get anything from ‘Coma of Souls’ onwards, but for classic thrash, seriously… get ‘Reign in Blood’ or 'Hell Awaits', because ‘Pleasure to Kill’ couldn’t last a single round against early Slayer.