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Rating: "Cause For Conflict" is not the predictable "return to the cabin" for the four warriors from Essen and never a furious tumble into soundscapes already widely explored with the post '90s makeup, but the transition from the dark experimentation of "Renewal" to the rational yet vehement metallic dawn of "Outcast". An album of transition, therefore, mistaken for a starting point by many long-time fans, still nursing their ears from listening to "Pleasure To Kill" and "Terrible Certainty".
The demon has evolved, leaving behind the old Noise house and opening its eyes to the world of machines, to the petroleum-green-covered transistors, to the creaking of cranes. In the trunk of memories, there is still the battlefield, the pile of skeletons, the smoking ruins, the extreme violence, the thoughts on the society of the time. Certainly akin to the cenobite Pinhead, this demon has nevertheless come to represent the German band more than their fast and scathing thrash metal, revealing itself as a symbol, a silent and terrifying travel companion.
Since "Endless Pain" in 1985, Kreator embodies the imperfect European thrash metal band, capable of gradually evolving both in sounds and in the structure of their pieces: streams of killer grater, elegant solos, and precise yet furious drumming. "Renewal" represents the dirty rain, a vigorous deletion of the metallic armor, the hooking of inspiration to noise temptations, compositional schemes slowed down and sped up with decency in leaden sonorities, a more disciplined and bemused voice bowing to sound as a reason of state.
"Cause For Conflict", released by GUN in 1995, is instead a watershed, a no man's land where Kreator and the monarch Petrozza reorganize their ideas, crouch to reflect, purifying themselves with a sound again angry, sprightly, baptized by Vincent Wojno and with lyrics even more critical of society and all the institutions that create oppression. The technical sticks of Joe Cangelosi (ex-Whiplash and Massacre) and the crackling bass of Christian Giesler dictate the pace in every episode. And the change of season is palpable: the linear drumming of "Renewal" is nullified by the snare of Cangelosi "forced," after "Insult To Injury" with Whiplash, to run out of breath, as happened at the time to Paul Bostaph, going from the solemn fanfare of "Twisted Into Form" to the pounding Slayer-esque "Divine Intervention". All tracks are marked by the double kick drum and, thanks to its push, the slow or rapid passages change skin both in the headlong restarts and in the more contemplative parts.
We have a Slayer-like "Killing Fields" structured opener which is "Prevail", the charming hit-and-run of "Men Without God" or the flood of speed in "Catholics Despot", highlighting the Church's negative primacy ("No respect for other people's lives"). There's no lack of an alternative single like "Lost" and useless swift fillers like "Dogmatic" or the "ambulance" "Bomb Threat," opposite to shadowy and inspired pieces like "Crisis Of Disorder". The shadow of "Renewal" surfaces here and there, especially in "Celestial Deliverance" but it is in "Isolation" that we find the sui generis claw: after 4 minutes of an ear-catching song (single in a shortened version), it plunges into silence and after 4 minutes the delirium of screams, feline howls, and scraping that recalls the intro of "End Of The World" from the beginnings emerges. The demon does not want to leave.
By the end of the platter, we feel that something is missing, or there's an abundance of Kreator elements that leave us baffled; impact and speed prevail over creativity: crystallization is around the corner. After experimenting with "Renewal," even the most staunch detractors of the band see in Mille and Co. a band in clear evolution, an institution that, however, to demonstrate the metal up your ass attitude to the audience disoriented by the previous "renewal," opts for a more robust sound, in line with the modern thrash of the era, as a balm for recent criticisms, but filtered by the "born of fire" drumming of Cangelosi in songs more frigid and robotized, which we feel as premature days of the blackbird. "Progressive Proletarians" then becomes a showcase for the drummer, for the didacticism that starts again from the technical maturation of "Extreme Aggression", while a "Sculpture Of Regret" observes the Coroner in the atmospheric intro but it's just a passage: the metallic burden returns forcefully in the second part.
"Cause For Conflict" finds its identity as a platform to take new flights, a reconciliation with its audience: Mille Petrozza opts for the course change of "Outcast", for the return of Ventor and the arrival of Tommy Vetterli on the second guitar. A new beginning that will not be the last, but will be among the most fascinating of the '90s, born of this suburban sound cultivated in Essen.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Prevail (03:59)
Death of emotions
Birth of decay
Fight revolution
Grips the heart of men
Rising rebellion
Loosing control
Pure mental terror
Reformation needed to be
Raised to future awareness
Manipulation has failed
Rulers, leaders
Anarchy will prevail, now
reinforced hate
Glowing, pulsate
Society failed
New generation awakes
Mental slavery, thought erasure
Cause for your condition
Mind murdering parasites
Forced into suicide
Material safety, plastic saviour
Basis of possession
Rulers participate
Anarchist dominate
Infected by a virus promise of a better
Day, conception of a master plan
Protectors of blind faith
Raised to new awareness
Individual way of life
A dated shit philosophy
Youth runs amok
Moloch masters, democrats
Diplomats desperation
Criminal energy, part of the strategy
Focus distraction, pain infection
Manipulation failed
Misleading disharmony
Now only victory
Life becomes perfection, when the spark
Has almost died
Decades of endless darkness
Now embraced by shining light
Autonomous power
Finally this war is won
Golden days of anarchy
The new age has begun
Moloch masters, democrats
Diplomats desperation
Criminal energy, part of the strategy
Focus distraction, pain infection
Manipulation failed
Misleading disharmony
Now only victory
Life becomes perfection, when the spark
Has almost died
Decades of endless darkness
Now embraced by shining light
Autonomous power
Finally this war is won
Golden days of anarchy
The new age has begun
Fear of the future
Hope for the past
Hymns of enslavement
Forever laid to rest
Elders tomorrow
Youth of today
Choice for a changing
Better world needed to be
Arised for future awareness
Manipulation has failed
Rulers leaders
Anarchy will prevail now
02 Catholic Despot (03:23)
Catholic's dictator
Swine without compasion
No respect for others life
Godsent corrupt saint
Rampant, organized crime of the cross
Rituals justified ways to express
The oldest lie in support of the
Heartless motherfucker
Sympathy there's none
You immoralize prevention
Abortion is not a sin
Heaven none of you'll ever be saved
Awareness drown in devotion
Follow the rules
Dig your own grave
Murder under the cross
Profit ways don't leave no
Room for the scum
Open your eyes the messiah
Will never come (your fuckin' messiah)
You're killing the poor
There is no justice
There is no law
There's no messiah
There is no saviour, there is no god
The truth you teach it ain't
No truth to me
the things you see are not
The thing that I see
03 Progressive Proletarians (03:24)
Evidence, freedom total fake
Media projection to enslave
Subject of this system you became
Object of derision total pain
Constantly deny your misery
Can't critizise a fact you cannot see
Interference mindwar affairs
Guaranteed existance of despair
Defiant generation
Total violent generation
Servant modern day dictatorship
Disabled too confused to get a grip
Limited perception slavery
Genius built to crush integrity
Infertility of soulless lifes
Defenceless to the visions of the mind
Ghost of strategy alienation
Exterminating powers of lifes passion
Children of the future
Get own path to go
Some will choose to follow
Some refuse control
Keep the faith in powers
Of integrity
Progressive proletarians
Capitalist strongest enemy
04 Crisis of Disorder (04:17)
Searching - for reality to hold on to
Phobia - detonation without cause
Terror - out of traumatic reaction
Raging - symptom of a shattered past
Restless soul on fire
Schizophrenic grace
Intense destructive energy
Infectious like the plague
Obsessive devastation
Possession of your brain
Suicidal subversive power
Constant crisis of disorder
Deeper - neurotic conflict inside
Freezin - cold excessive force
Empty - personality's mutating
Slowly - self destructive systematic
Damage of identity, derangement
Paranoid, depression
Past life trauma, tyrany
Emptiness is shining in your eyes
[Repeat first verse]
[Repeat chorus]
06 Bomb Threat (01:46)
Impending doom, assassinate
Agressive drive explodes
Uncontrollable resistance
Paeallised dismay
Agenda carried all around
The world is in a shock
Terroristic action brutal
Sacrifice and loss
Bomb threat - final warning
No statistic prediction saw it comin�
Hateful dedication
Defecate your force
Dehuminization
Panic hits the nation
People keep fighting back
Pushed to the limits in pain
Ready for anything
Now or never laws made to break
People keep fighting back
Movement united by hate
Together break down the walls
Terrorists blood marks their way
Panic hits the nation
A wave of fear, a psychic shock
Radical impact of the blast
Frightening mayhem, terror, doom
There is nothing you can do
Extremists on a mission
A reawoken scorn
Of a lost civilisation
Against the systems loss of its position
08 Lost (03:35)
Existance of brutality
Agravation infinite greed
Necrosexuality
All there's left is hate
All there's left is pain
Mass frustation
Is the cost
Global depression
Life stands still, all love is lost
No experience too extreme
Orgasmic pleasure, abstract dreams
Mercyless perversity
All there's left is hate
All there's left is pain
Mass frustation
Is the cost
Global depression
Life stands still, all love is lost
Hate cannot die, forever alive
Mass frustation
Is the cost
Global depression
Life stands still, all love is lost
09 Dogmatic (01:27)
Ruin is your profit
Meraud the hollow mind
Religious passion is not for you
Agnostic modern science
Suffocate superior forces
Tearing down this fortress of control
Dogmatic authority falls
Alternative to submission
Mental emancipation
Severance, selection of
All powers from above
Strong minded in preparation
For this sickening mess
We're living in
Threat for your security
Authority will collapse
End pseudo-democracy
Take fate in your own hands
Violent terroristic action
Only self-defense
Ignorence is unconciousness
No pessimistic vision
Corruption pseudo peace
Propaganda drug of nation
Deceiving you and me
A psychosocial revolt
Becomes aware, horowing truth
Hear my call!
Dogmatic authority falls!
10 Sculpture of Regret (02:59)
It never left this world
Negative part of duality
That is the cause
For all men's evil
The force that leads to endless wars
To destory what's been built
Over the centuries
Element of fear
Ever present
Eternal hatred
Spirit of demise
Conquered our minds again
Wartime confrontation
Conflict ends in rage
Sadistic tendencies awake
Progress turned the land
Into a mountain of dead bodies
Sculpture of regret
Triumph of the primitive
Knowing earthly peace
Ain't possible
Sheltering mutation
Protection from demise
Euthanasia demands
Violence is the modern way of life
No direction got nowhere to go
Death, aggression, terror from below
War is reality
Peace just a fantasy
Hellish disharmony
Repression misery
Kill for your fatherland
this war will never end
In this field of corpses
War drags ever on
Ability to kill the proof
Murder and aggression
Is the rule
11 Celestial Deliverance (03:15)
Deception into your soul
It will creep
Like the fundation of a certain demise
Reflection facing a vision so deep
Leaves reality seem like a lie
Downward, the only way
Soulless interaction
Beneath you, dragin' you down
Drowning your soul erased
Altered state addiction
Slowly, into decline
Magic enlightment celestial deliverance
Taking horrors carry them away
Supernatural redemption
A narcotic mirage
Creates a psychotic haze
Downward, the only way
Soulless interaction
Beneath you, dragin' you down
Drowning your soul erased
Altered state addiction
Slowly, into decline
Crying, so afraid to let go
Falling into a neverending hole
Fading, cannot see the light
12 Isolation (11:54)
Here in isolation
Seeing more than the eye can see
Safe in peaceful silence
So far out of reach
Closer to purest liberty
Isolation is what I seek
Manifest with the long lost truth
Where pain and agony is absolute
In this life of sadness
True serenity lies within
Dream of distant places
Where no soul has ever been
In my mind
No time, no space
So close
Misery I can escape
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