Out Of The Dark...Into The Light

I whipped out this smaller and a bit rare release on my desk from one of the greatest European metal bands of all time, mostly to tell the peculiar circumstances through which I found this disk. On my vacation in Malaysia I visited a local Tower Records, a global record store-chain with mostly mainstream selections on the shelves, but at least in Tokyo, Japan, also a surprisingly wide array of metal. But I didn’t expect this from Malaysia. My thoughts were right for most of the store, just mainly American R n B and hiphopsters, until I crossed along with he letter K, and there right next to R. Kelly and the like, stood Kreators 1989 EP, Out Of The Dark…Into The Light. The place and time to find such an album was just so amusing to me that I had to buy it, even though I had most of the songs on other albums already as studio versions. The record contains the EP-only studio tracks Impossible To Cure and Lambs To Slaughter (which were later reissued as bonus tracks on the re-release of Terrible Certainty) and an array of the bands 80s classics recorded live from Kreators performance at the 1988 Dynamo Festival in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The studio tracks are both very standard but highly effective, classic Kreator with Impossible beginning with some mid-paced riffing and then speeding up to a real thrash steamroller. Lambs is a more straight-to-the-point mosher that features awesome riffs and even some nice harmony leads. Milles voice is what it always has been at its best – biting, harsh and full of conviction and attitude. In my experience people either love it or hate it. Personally, I think Petrozza is one of the best thrash vocalists of the 80s. He even displays some Halfordesque screams in Lambs and does it pretty well. The live section features Flag Of Hate from 1985s Endless Pain; Riot Of Violence and Awakening The Gods from 1986s Pleasure To Kill; Terrible Certainty and Behind The Mirror from 1988s Terrible Certainty and Love Us Or Hate Us from the 1989 classic, Extreme Aggression. All tracks are performed with extremely high energy and power. The sounds are also surprisingly good, especially with the very crisp and razor-sharp, crushing guitar sounds and the pounding drum beats. Flag Of Hate gets the biggest crowd yelling-slaughter-response, while the longer neck-twister Awakening Of The Gods is my personal favorite and Mirror displays even some “Kreator-going-clean-guitars”. Well, as an intro that is, after that its straight back to furious riffing and screaming;). But no tracks are really left behind in a very strong line of thrashing gems. A bit of a rarity for all fans of European metal and especially thrash maniacs all around. A very nice albeit, small testament of one of Europes strongest and most vital metal bands live power when put to the test by a maniacal crowd of headbangers. The crowd could be a bit louder but that goes to show that this has had no touch-ups and such, this is raw live footage like it was moshed through. I also find personal amusement from the fact that Mille gives most of the speeches between songs in German. Its always nice to try and guess which words are profanities among the praising of metal from the mouth of this German pioneer. Not so essential for more casual fans, who will survive just fine with the 80s studio albums that have most of these songs at least in studio form, but a nice add to the collections of more hard core fans. And of course the songs rule, so that’s a given reason to buy this if you get the chance.