Kreator
Endorama

THE REVIEW

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!