Review Summary: Though noticeably a band that is starting out End Of The World shows potential and skill.
Alright so technically this isn’t even an album. It takes only 16 minutes to get through the four songs that compose End of the World, Kreator’s second demo under their original name Tormentor, before they recorded their timeless debut, Endless Pain. Two of the songs that are on this demo are actually found, very slightly rearranged, in Endless Pain. So why review it? Because it is interesting enough on its own to warrant some sort of analysis, as it is what could be considered Kreator’s formative stage, or baby steps to put it more colloquially, and should be a considered listen for anyone who’s ever moshed along to Riot Of Violence.
The album starts off with a wall of guitar noise and feedback accompanied by the evil laughter of Jurgen Reil, for those of you not informed in Kreator’s history (how dare you) Mile Petrozza only began singing full time on Pleasure To Kill. Armies of Hell quickly erupts into a lo-fi thrash fest from hell as banshee squeals give place to warp speed riffs, fast beats and gladly audible bass. Though the demo shows excessively clear influences from Venom, Slayer and Metallica it fuses the different elements from these bands in a way that doesn’t sound totally unoriginal. As is normal for a band that is starting out, they simply try to imitate the bands they listen to, and they do it damn well. None of the members could even drive when they wrote and recorded these songs yet the riffs put up against those of any Bay Area Thrasher.
Listening to the demo it’s easy to tell why the songs that ended up on Endless Pain did so, Tormentor and Cry War are leagues beyond the other two songs, which, though not bad, seem kind of lost and unfocused and try to go thirteen different places at once. Aside from this all the album’s setbacks could also be considered bonuses, the members’ limited technical skill, the lo-fi production, these things might bother more mainstream or more casual listeners but extreme metal fans will love the rawness presented by the demo. Perhaps the only truly annoying thing about the bad production is the way Petrozza’s guitar squeals in Cry War and Bonebreaker, which will completely obliterate your ears if you are on headphones (minor detail though).
But these little flaws don’t really take much away from the powerful madness displayed in End of the World. However the two really enjoyable tracks can be found, with better production, in the Endless Pain record, so though I wouldn’t call this a necessary buy for the casual fan, I would certainly call it a worthy beginning for a band that would later accomplish true greatness.
