“The English press used to call us ‘hate metal’. It fit the music”: How Kreator made Pleasure To Kill, the vicious 80s classic that put German thrash on the map

Kreator posing for a photograph in the mid-80s.

Germany was a beast unto its own in the mid-80s. The Brits may have invented heavy metal and the Americans turned it into a global commodity, but in Germany, metal was a way of life for millions of head-bangers, trained in the fine art of thrash by three specific bands – Kreator, Sodom and Destruction. By the mid-80s, the members of this unholy trinity were competing with each other to play the fastest and angriest, a competition given an early kickstart by Kreator’s debut album, Endless Pain, in 1985. Unfeasibly fast and amusingly lo-fi, the album promised much for the future – a promise which frontman and primary songwriter Mille Petrozza was determined to fulfil on his band’s next album.

This feature originally appeared in Metal Hammer Presents Metallica And The Story Of Thrash (Feb 2014) (Image credit: Future)