ALBUM INFORMATION
During the career of the german extreme thrash-metal
Kreator the frontman
Mille Petrozza tried out many different styles to expand or change th sound of the band. It was not a great move many times though, some albums came close to the gothic areas, his vocals were changing time to time and
Kreator's sound becamed less aggressive and the speed was somewhat turned down in pace. This album which is called
''Violent Revolution'' is a refreshing album were past versus future, the band has returned to their more aggressive sound and mixed it with more melodic elements and the vocals are aggressive and a bit harsh here too.
THE CREW
The line-up for this band today is vocalist and guitarist
Mille Petrozza,
Sami Yli-Sirniö is the second guitarist, the bassist is called
Christian Geisler and the drummer is the long time companion
Jurgen ''Ventor'' Reil.
Petrozza's performance is good in this album, though the guitar work is not as aggressive as before but the melodic part is great. The riffing is still heavy, quite catchy and at sometimes very skillfully performed but most of the time the riffing is slower. But the guitar solos in this album is very good, the solos are very melodic and quite enjoying to listen at, there are not so much chaos and disorder in the solos and that made a whole different sound.
Sami's performance is equally as good as
Petrozza's, though I don't know which one of them who plays what but the riffage is solid, heavy but it seems like the complexity in the guitar work has changed to a more simplistic area. Bassist
Christian does a pretty good work also, he follows the other band members and makes a sturdy rhythm section, there are a few parts in some songs where you can hear the bass but the bass in general sounds very low though.
Ventor's drum work is great here, I guess that he is the only member that makes the album sound more aggressive as they did years ago. The drum patterns are changing from fast thrash drumming to pretty slow metal tempos. The drumbeats are though very and they are very catchy
THINGS I LIKED ABOUT THE ALBUM
Things I liked about this album was quite a few, the overall sound was a thing I enjoyed very much. The melodic elements combined with their ''original'' aggressive sound made a pretty good mix, songs like
Ghetto War,
Replicas Of Life and
Bitter Sweet Revenge are examples of songs that has quite many melodic moments. To be honest so does every song have some melody in them, especially in the guitar solos which are melodic all of them more or less. A thing I also enjoyed was the good mix between classic thrash with the ''power-metal'' elements, I personlly prefer
Kreator's faster and more aggressive material but this was though quite entertaining. The fast drumming, the half-raw, heavy and fast guitar work along with
Petrozza's harsh and aggressive vocals do remind you about the prime-days that the band had in their early career. Songs like
Reconquering The Throne,
Violent Revolution and
Second Awakening would be good examples of songs that has more furious paces and heaviness than melody and slower tempos.
THINGS I DISLIKED ABOUT THE ALBUM
This album might be slightly flawless in it's sound but there was also some things that didn't I couldn't coop with. One thing I didn't like was that the songs had a tendency to slow down during the guitar solos, if the solos had a bit faster pace it would sounded much better in my opinion. I think that this happened in every song, the songs got slower during the melodic solos and I lost my interest to the songs when this occurred. One thing I noticed when I had listen through this album after five or six times the thought crossed my mind that almost none of the songs got stuck in my head. There was though quite many songs that I liked but none of them was really catchy except for my personal favorites like
System Decay and
All The Same Blood (Unity).
FINAL JUDGEMENT
There you have it, I thought that this album was a quite good album actually and that's because of the blend between old and new. It was also a little setback because the songs got slower in their pace during the guitar solos and the songs didn't sound so interesting any more, but that is just my own opinion though. The album had good songs, some were good and some were less good but there was no song that was horrible, the only song I didn't enjoy as much as the other songs was
The Patriarch which is an instrumental song. The album has a very fresh sound though and I would recommend this so
Kreator fans in first hand, in second people how are interested in their newer material, and in third hand people who wants to check them out this would be an easy start for you. Hope you enjoyed this review and I hope I have given some guidance to you dear readers.
PROS
+ Very good mix of old material and their new experimental stuff
+ The material as a whole is very melodic
+ The vocals are strong and doesn't sound odd in any way
+ This would be a good album for beginner listeners
CONS
- The songs goes often in to a slower pace when the guitar solos starts, and that makes the song less interesting
- Fans that liked their more extreme and faster stuff would not like this as much
- Not a big deal but some more bass wouldn't hurt
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Reconquering The Throne
-- System Decay
-- Ghetto War
-- Replicas Of Life
This album was hard to rate but I finally got to a final score and the overall album rating will be.
3.5/5
