Difficult Music

Review: Destruction and Kreator, Sept 26, Studebaker’s Cabaret
I loved Kerrang! magazine in the mid-’80s. I originally started buying this slim British biweekly for their slavish coverage of ascendant progsters Marillion, but soon a newfangled subgenre called “thrash metal” also caught my imagination. Kerrang! mocked and embraced the movement equally—opinions varied from writer to writer. Depending on who had the floor, Venom, Metallica, Slayer were either clowns or geniuses. Because I’ve always been attracted to the musically freakish and extreme, I bought Kill ’Em All and got on board.

By ’86 the cover of Kerrang! would be as likely to feature Hanneman/King as Tipton/Downing. And inside the magazine you’d probably encounter the likes of Destruction and Kreator—German acts who were as extreme as anything out there. Exciting things were happening. Soon-to-be-classic albums were released every couple weeks, major labels were snatching up the best bands (and, by and large, not interfering with their artistic growth), and new bands were reaching new extremes of speed and heaviness. For probably the first time in my rock-following life, I was in on the ground floor of a new genre.

So last week’s Destruction/Kreator double bill (shall we call this The Antonym Tour?) was a pilgrimage back to those klassic and, indeed, korrosive days. Both bands had visited Vancouver before, but the metal landscape has shifted in the years since. As yet more proof that I’m getting old, thrash metal has become “retro”—hence the “retro-thrash” movement that Terrorizer magazine made note of back in December ’96 (which makes me wonder if we’re due for an onslaught of retro-retro thrash). Metal has always paid homage to itself (because no one else would, I suppose), and so newer bands like Inferno and Usurper have aped Destruction, Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and so on. Necropolis Records even released a Thrash Metal Holocaust compilation a couple years ago, filled with up-and-coming bands capturing the “authentic” ’80s thrash vibe.

Thursday’s gig was very much a case of giving the old-schoolers what they wanted. I arrived in time to see the start of Destruction’s set. The trio kicked off with “Curse the Gods.” The sound was a mess (too much bass, no guitar), but it quickly got sorted out. Destruction are a funny looking band. Bassist/vocalist Schmier is quite a large fellow, while guitarist Mike is small and slight, with a huge mop of hair and the same peach-fuzz moustache I sported in grade 8. The pair of them crisscrossed the stage, with Schmier going back and forth between two mikes at either side. But did they look metal? Indeed, they looked metal—studded leather vests and bullet belts all around, except for the shirtless, pasty drummer, who would have been making his own gravy if he’d dressed like his bandmates.

They played material both old and new, and heads were banging everywhere I looked.

But when the mighty Kreator came on, it was clear they were in a class of their own. Even though they had more members than Destruction, they were much tighter, and the twin guitar lineup gave them so much more musical flexibility—harmonies, solo tradeoffs, the works. Although Kerrang!’s Malcolm Dome once described them as “Accept warped by the Chernobyl fallout,” to me their style is a fiendish combination of Slayer and Iron Maiden, with speed and harmony and a touch of progressiveness. I loved it. They played “Riot of Violence,” “People of the Lie,” “Flag of Hate,” and many other songs of Kreator at this concert of heavy metal. I took in the spectacle from the edge of the pit.

I’d like to flesh out this review a bit more, but I’ve got to post this today. It’s been too long between entries. I’ll just say that it was a tremendous show, and it was nice to see so many diehards out at Burnaby’s own thrash metal holocaust. Shows like this don’t come around too often, and when they deliver as convincingly as this one did, it’s all the more satisfying.