Diogenes
Like clockwork, German thrash metal kings Kreator are back with another slab of Teutonic metal for the masses. While their latest album, Phantom Antichrist, breaks a streak of album covers with malignant and disfigured faces on them (sort of; the dude’s pretty ugly, but it’s not an extreme close-up), the music features no such dip in quality. Of course it’s good!
Phantom Antichrist continues to develop the well-balanced, clean, and melodic thrash metal sound Kreator first adopted on their 2001 “revival” album, Violent Revolution. While there isn’t anything as melodic as, say, “To the After Burn,” Phantom Antichrist is not short on slick guitar harmonies, and they’re beautifully blended with the band’s trademark aggression and Mille Petrozza’s raspy vocals to form the modern Kreator style we know and love. Indeed, if you’ve heard the band’s past few efforts, there’s probably not much on this album that will surprise you, but that tends to fall by the wayside when the music is as tight and well-produced as it is here.
Frontman Petrozza has mentioned that Kreator went into the writing of Phantom Antichrist wanting to make their greatest album ever; while their landmark albums of the ‘80s will probably never be topped, it’s obvious that a lot of effort went into this. The transitions within the songs are absolutely sublime, as tracks like “Civilization Collapse” and “Until Our Paths Cross Again” trade melody for aggression so seamlessly that you actually have to, you know, pay attention to the music! There’s also a definite sense of urgency in the band’s playing, almost as if they know it’s their last album or that the world is ending this December (who actually believes this?) and they want to put one more solid notch in the thrash totem before they go out. This, again, goes back to the care put into Phantom Antichrist; just listen to the climax of “The Few, The Proud, The Broken” and tell me you don’t just feel every note in that anthemic guitar lead. Kreator have never been a band to mail in a performance (even when they didn’t really know what they wanted to play in the ‘90s), so this isn’t necessarily anything new, but they really hit the songwriting nail on the head this time around. The only thing on this album that I could definitely do without is the addition of clean vocals; for all his greatness as a harsh vocalist, Petrozza ain’t that good of a singer (at least, not anymore-who knows if he could have pulled it off 15 years ago), and the way they’re used seems awfully In Flames-ish. Please, keep the mumbling out of my thrash metal!
Thirteen albums into their career, Kreator shows that they can still bring it with the same intensity as their peers, even after going through enough sonic changes to put most other bands down for the count. I’d be lying if I said Phantom Antichrist is anything groundbreaking or surprising, but at the same time, it’s highly professional and executed well enough to appeal to almost anyone with ears. It should shock no one that this album is recommended, and will probably go down as one of the top thrash releases of the year.