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Rating: Musical evolution can be a sharp double-edged sword... An artist or a band with a decade-long history, positive but not "evolutionary," almost always finds itself at a crossroads (not that of Ruggeri, let's be clear)... This crossroads usually leads to two choices:
1) Statically clinging to their origins, always re-proposing the same "musical formulas" to not disappoint the expectations of their old "retro-guard" fans without substantially changing sound and attitude.
2) Initiating a musical path of change (and evolution indeed) that inevitably leads them to distance themselves from what they've done in the past, enriching their sound and contaminating it with new aspects and unexpected influences... This decision of "mobility" is almost always followed by predictable and conflicting consequences: there's a risk of being labeled as "traitors of the faith" by old fans who then use all their energy to denigrate and defame the artist (or band) in the eyes of people; simultaneously, however, they end up winning over new and numerous groups of passionate listeners belonging to different realities and musical tastes, ready to triumph (and fill the pockets of) their new idols.
From all this, it's easy to deduce that the artist or band chooses one path or the other (stasis or evolution), based on their selfish "predictions of success-money" (who said Metallica, Litfiba, but also Manowar, Ligabue etc...?), losing the meaning of evolution or stasis itself. This has happened in almost all cases and in any musical genre except for a few (and magnificent) exceptions.
In the Metal field, in fact, some sporadic bands managed, and still succeed, in evolving and transforming their music, taking it far, and higher, from their established debut style, without being influenced by the "easy God of Money" in doing so. These bands (for example Anathema, but they're unrelated), follow the unexplored path of change, not to attract new fans or to have more commercial success (Brrr, what a horrible word), but simply because they feel the need to evolve, and doing so turns out to be, as it were, the only way of remaining consistent with themselves, as if evolution itself were so natural it feels involuntary (fully reflecting the very meaning of the word evolution).
One of the bands that impressed me the most positively around the end of the last millennium were the Germans Kreator.
If you haven't been living under a rock in the past twenty years (I'm talking to the metalheads), you will surely know that the aforementioned were, in the eighties, one of the most important, influential, and destructive bands of Teutonic Thrash Metal, dedicated from the start to a deadly and hyper-aggressive sound without any compromise, where speed and violence were the keywords of their extreme music... Magnificent and malignant albums like "Pleasure to Kill" (1986), "Extreme Aggression" (1989), or "Coma of Souls" (1990) have made the history of the angriest and explosive Thrash (and in a sense minimalist). Then, in the nineties, something changes... With (in my view splendid) "Renewal" (1992) begins the courageous path of musical evolution which, through albums like "Cause for Conflict" (1995) and the immense "Outcast" (1997), brings Kreator to the crossroads of evolutionary experimentalism, softening (in part) and expanding the sounds and contaminating them with more "considered" and "relaxed" atmospheres but always absolutely aggressive and brutally introspective.
But it is in 1999 that, at the dawn of the new millennium, our band releases the album that will be the extraordinary endpoint of their musical "metamorphosis": This wonderful Endorama!
Fatally and almost naturally (see above), this album was somewhat of a disaster in terms of sales: having absolutely no "commercial bite" to attract the masses, it faced the wrath of the band's old fans who angrily labeled "Endorama" as a betrayal and departure from the beloved sound matrices that overflowed in the group's early work and were still present, albeit in part, in the works preceding this one... In conclusion, it was a real Flop.
But the old fans had not understood the greatness of this work.
"Endorama" is, I believe, the most complicated, committed, and thoughtful album Kreator have ever made... It deviates so much from their initial sounds that it almost feels like the work of a different band but is, at the same time, incredibly connected to their twenty-year past (:evolution).
Let's say it right away... Anyone expecting the usual old-school thrash outbursts from this work will have been in for quite a surprise... With "Endorama," Kreator continues the path started with "Renewal" and brings it to its fullest completion... The album is as intimate, reflective, and "sensitive" as one could expect from a metal band, of course, we are talking about Kreator, so the sensitivity is very "violent," but it remains sensitivity nonetheless.
The album is truly fascinating in every passage and leans heavily on an intelligent and subtly disguised (but not too much) underlying melody. Some passages are tainted with "industrial" influences (semi-filtered voices and chopped parts) or "psychedelic" (with guitars at times bordering on "post-prog-rock") and the songs dangerously and pleasantly approach gothic influences that lend an unexpected depth to the entire work. The sounds stretch and slow down and the pace becomes softer and "cultivated," managing at the same time to maintain its typical aggressiveness (and heaviness).
Musically, it's almost as if, while in the early albums (more direct and incredibly more brutal), our band would scream their anger and extreme and desperate condemnation of the world and the degraded and degrading civilization with a sonic assault that had few rivals at the time, now they'd "stopped" to reason about the reasons for this condemnation, representing their unease and fears through music, and analyzing the mistakes and errors-horrors of mankind at the end of the last millennium. Frightening.
Everything is surprising from the get-go... Mille Petrozza's voice, while still maintaining its "bastard" setup, manages to be deep and expressive, as if it has discovered the contact point between heaviness and relaxation, between painful involvement and detached condemnation. Incredible.
The guitar work of Mille and Tommy Vetterli surprises with its intensity, variety, and dynamism, their sound combines refinement with heaviness and fully represents the band's intent: to create "prophetically engaging" music that perfectly marries the meaning of the lyrics, which can be considered, in essence, a prophecy about the new millennium.
Christian Giesler's powerful and pounding bass and Jurgen "Ventor" Reil's precise and, at times, soft drumming wrap and bind the various atmospheres always remaining a prominent part.
But there's much more... Things that fans of the early Kreator can't even imagine... Acoustic guitar arpeggios, keyboards forming the evocative backbone on which the notes of the various instruments often unfold, relaxing and "thoughtful" moments alternating (and coinciding) with more intense and concise parts ("Chosen Few," "Future Ring" "Willing Spirit"), unsettling pieces bordering on (melodic) Gothic Metal ("Golden Age," "Passage To Babylon," "Tyranny"), more aggressive and faster moments that nonetheless maintain a "harmonious depth" ("Endorama," where Mille duets with Lacrimosa frontman Tilo Wolff, "Shadowland," "Soul Eraser," and "Pandemonium"), incredible and surprising parts dominated by piano and acoustic guitars ("Everlasting Flame") and an unthinkable symphonic piece like "Entry" which expresses all the delicate and (so far) hidden sensitive personality of Mille Petrozza (author of almost all the tracks).
Even though it's not a concept album, it can be said that this "Endorama," in its lyrics, has a strong common denominator: fear, unease, and a pessimistic certainty directed at the new millennium (it was 1999).
In short... Take some strong-spirited and reflective young people, let them grow in the Ruhr basin in Germany (one of the most polluted and industrialized places in Europe where, immersed in the gray smog, it's impossible not to become steel-hard and pessimistic) and provide them with philosophical, historical, and current reading materials… The result will be Kreator and this "Endorama"... The alchemical union of spirit and rock, pessimism and malice, surrender and anger, depth and cynical relaxation. Immense.
Unfortunately (though many would say fortunately), due to the commercial failure of this album, Kreator of the new millennium, too, will sadly bow to the rules of the music business and subsequently release albums more musically linked to their beginnings in an attempt to win back their disappointed old fans (and I don't understand) by this extremely courageous (master)piece. They will therefore subject themselves to those mentioned "commercial" rules, undermining, even if with very good works, the work done up to this album (see the first part of the review).
4 stars out of 5 only because, in the long run, indeed you do feel a bit of the absence of a violent outburst on the edge of Thrash/Death to which we had grown accustomed.
"This celebration of the night can light your shattered life...
If you believe..."
Listen to it!
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Golden Age (04:51)
Let me take you down
Deeper than you know
Reality is gone
Yet so much left to show
Let me take you down
Let us look inside
There's still so much to come
It's time to say goodbye
Broken dreams
Misery replaced by constant extasy
Wide awake open wide
existance of a better kind
Waits for you waits for me
Our minds become forever free
Free of fear free of rage
The coming of the Golden Age for all
Let me take you down
Let life fade away
The ritual has begun
Your life begins today
Let me take you down
Explore the other side
Enlightened as we drown
It's time to say goodbye
Don't you turn around now
Don't you be afraid now
Just turn another page now
Celebrate the Golden Age
02 Endorama (03:20)
This is the end of all life's suffering
This is the end of all life's pain
Fear, destruction, greed, exists no longer
Nothings left now nothing can remain
It's getting closer
Follow my friend
Endorama is crushing you
This the end
Expect no mercy
Just understand
Endorama comes for you
This is the end
This is the end of your false paradise
This is the end of mankinds pride
Masques of selfishness needed no longer
All forgotten dark illusions died
It's getting closer
Follow my friend
Endorama is crushing you
This the end
Expect no mercy
Just understand
Endorama comes for you
This is the end
As long as you're alive you've got to suffer
Death will take you from this labyrinth
Open up you'll see
This life just can't be real
Don't look back just let it all go
Into eden or inferno
This is the end of all your struggling
This is the end of this domain
Hate, regression, lies, exist no longer
As earth becomes the epitaph of cain
It's getting closer
Follow my friend
Endorama is crushing you
This the end
Expect no mercy
Just understand
Endorama comes for you
This is the end
03 Shadowland (04:27)
In a land where no love can be born
Self destruction everywhere
A restless soul on it's search for an answer
Sees through this masquerade of dispair
In a time where no love can be born
Desperation frozen eyes
A restless soul so alone no direction
Suffering as they follow the blind
This is a new dawn rising
Over this Shadowland
Tearing you from the world that you used to know
In a land where no love can be born
Isolation is the price
And the horror of this cold souless place here
Put everlasting stains on your life
In a time where no love can be born
Another crisis yet to come
A senseless life breeds a senseless death
Wondering what kind of pain will come next
This is a new dawn rising
Over this Shadowland
Tearing you from the world that you used to know
Tired of being alive
losing every time
Suffering side by side
shadows of mankind
This is a new dawn rising
Over this Shadowland
Tearing you from the world that you used to know
04 Chosen Few (04:30)
For the first time in my life
I've seen the fire within your eyes
My mind it screams for shelter now
I know i've got to resist some how
My religion my certain death
My salvation my sacriledge
My inner sanctum my prophecy
You've become everything and more to me
So our souls will be one
A new era has begun
Fantasies will come true
Not only for the Chosen Few
For freedom is a two edged sword
And life is only a gift for gods
Straight from the heart of the serpent's kiss
To see something as it really is...
My prescious kingdom my empire
My tragedy and my desire
My life's blood my shining light
Feels like i am finally alive
05 Everlasting Flame (05:23)
The atmosphere around you is dark and cold
You're only seventeen but in your heart you're feeling old
But one day you will leave this place of fear
Escape to somewhere far away far away from here
A grain of sand at the ocean shore
Faceless lost with the urge for more
Can't break free suffering in pain
Following the Everlasting Flame
The factory walls here leave no room to breath
You're thirty four and some old friends became only memories
And still you need to hide your bitter tears
And dream of somewhere far away far away from here
Swallowed by this material world
Pre ordained from his death to birth
Can't break free suffering
Following the Everlasting Flame
There's just no way out of this living hell
You're fifty six now just a shadow of your broken self
A wasted life the pain won't disappear
You'll never see a better place far away from here
Swallowed by this material world
Pre ordained from his death to birth
Can't break free suffering
Following the Everlasting Flame
06 Passage to Babylon (04:24)
I can make you anything you want to be
I can show you anything you want to see
I can make your hidden fantasies come true
I can make you see things from a different view
Just keep running further down
Never stop don't turn around
Looking back but never stare
No regrets you should not care
Just keep running to the light
Heading for what sleeps inside
Colours brighter than the sun
I'm the only one who knows the
Last Passage To Babylon
I can take you anywhere you want to go
I can teach you anything you need to know
I can show you ways out of this tragedy
I can give you life the way it used to be
Soon we'll see what lies beyond
What will be what's soon to come
Something life can't offer you
A prescious gift one cannot lose
Come to babylon with me now come
10 Willing Spirit (04:36)
After death has taken you from life
You have come to me in the night
The aura of an ancient beauty shining through
Like a goddess of fallen grace
I'm longing for your souls embrace
And all that life has lost i've found in you
The spirit is willing the flesh is weak
Just like a thousand suns it shines on me
The spirit is willing the flesh is weak
For now i'm seeing more than the eye can see
So i wait as i watch the stars
I feel you're near but you're yet too far
Too heal me from the flames that penetrate my mind
I could swear that i 've felt your touch
Your magic presence i need so much
Becomes reality only at night
The spirit is willing the flesh is weak
Just like a thousand suns it shines on me
The spirit is willing the flesh is weak
For now i'm seeing more than the eye can see
As i watch you disappear in silence
Was it really true or just a dream
As morning drags me back to life
And swallowed everything
Illusion killed the angel without wings
11 Pandemonium (04:10)
Pandemonium all around
Can't you fell it coming down
Pandemonium in my brain
Over and over and over again
Over and over and over again
Over and over and over again
Over and over and over again
And now you know the answer
And now you see the truth
Swallow this bitter pill
As all religion dies for you
and all the things that happened
In all those times long gone
Gave birth to life like lies
Apocalyptic pandemonium
Pandemonium
Pandemonium in the air
god has left us in despair
Desperate could not stand the pain
Over and over and over again
Over and over and over again
Over and over and over again
Over and over and over again
Now that your world is buring
Now that it ends in tears
Inferno has arrived
Nothing can make it disappear
And all the things that happened
In all those times long gone
Gave birth to life likes lies
Apocalyptic pandemonium
Pandemonium
A psychodrama is dragging you
Out of a life surreal
A better future waits for you
A life that might have been
So give your soul and you may live
Limitless fantasies
This celebration of the night
Can light your shattered life
If you believe...
12 Tyranny (03:59)
Have been down for much too long bitter taste of this
Time, getting sick and tired about the way things are
So tell me where is all the peace of mind that i could
Never find, never wanted what you offered me at all
Tell me, tell me, tell me
What do you believe in
Tell me, tell me, tell me
What do you believe
Give me, give me, give me
Something to believe in
Give me, give me, give me
Something to believe
Have been broken much too long with a heart of anger
I could never understand what you became so tell me
Where is your heaven on earth that i could never find
Maybe i am just too blind to realize
Tell me, tell me, tell me
What do you believe in
Tell me, tell me, tell me
What do you believe
Give me, give me, give me
Something to believe in
Give me, give me, give me
Something to believe
Do you believe in pain
Do you believe in hate
This life it ain't for me
Your world it ain't for me
Tell me, tell me, tell me
What do you believe in
Tell me, tell me, tell me
What do you believe
Give me, give me, give me
Something to believe in
Give me, give me, give me
Something to believe
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