Customer Reviews

Hordes Of Chaos

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been following Kreator ever since Terrible Certainty and have always been seduced by the passion Mille Petrozza and his cohorts have put across in each release. Mille - like Machine Head's Rob Flynn - is first and foremost a metal fan as well as a musician. He lives, breathes, sleeps and eats metal. This release is full of the usual conviction and intensity but also has more 'hooks' or catchy melodies than its predecessor Enemy of God. This is no Opeth or Agalloch. Progressive is not a common word in Kreator circles, although the terrific Outcast and Endorama albums show that Kreator can dabble in the subtle and melancholic if it chooses to. But this release absolutely smacks of freshness and virtuosity and will make you want to bounce off walls when you hear it. Well it does for me and I'm a 38 year old father of two. So there. This is probably their strongest album since Extreme Agression and for those of you enjoying the current thrash revival, this will remind you what we've been missing all these years.

It is well recorded, and was recorded more or less 'Live' as portrayed in the DVD, with all the musicians playing the base of the songs together. It isn't nearly as crisp and clear as 'Enemy of God'. But it works. It sounds a little looser and I will say the riffs are nothing new, but very well executed. I love this bands sound, especially in the 'Extreme Aggression' , 'Coma of Souls' era. Therefore, the sound on this disc is to my liking as well as the flow of the disc. Has a good punch.

The tracks themselves line up well with 'Enemy of God'.. If you like Kreator overall you will like this CD. Nothing you haven't come to expect. The best tracks are 'War Curse' and 'Absolute Misanthropy'. Contagious riffs. 'Escalation' is very catchy, great riffing. Just a killer track as well. 'Destroy what Destroys You' is the most accessible song on here, but it is excellent nonetheless. The others fit with the rest of Kreator's catalog. Nothing brand new, They stay in their comfort zone. Mid paced thrash with a solid foundation. Though they do thrash it up in spots pretty hard. Almost (very) Slayer-esque in the Guitar Solo's and vocal delivery. especially on 'Destroy...' The 3-4 minute length of most songs makes them even more lethal. Not much room for the over-melodic stuff.

The reason for the 4 stars? The vocal! Very raw and at times annoying. Mille really gets to the bottom of his gut on this CD. I like it for the most part, but sometimes it just hits those notes that make you shriek! Uncomfortable almost. Sounds like he went for the 'Tom Araya' style with the yelling choruses. I will say I am curious as to why he opted to take this tone throughout 80% of this disc. Makes for a more difficult listen.

But I am a seasoned Kreator fan and other than the vocal, its an A+.
There is a lot of energy. The DVD is decent as well. Shows behind the scenes of the making of this CD. Just a bit tough to keep track of the subtitles! A great value for the price.. Don't pass it up.

If you're reading this, you're a Kreator fan. If you're a Kreator fan you most likely enjoyed their last release "Enemy of God" and classics like "Coma of Souls" and "Terrible Certainty." If you like those, you'll like "Hordes of Chaos."
This is traditional thrash metal, from a band that was there in the beginning. The fact that this CD was recorded as a band, and not one track at a time comes through as a more raw, powerful sound.
Mille's voice is the same and the riffs are all killer.
As for the DVD, it's pretty cool. Nothing ground-breaking, but it gives you a snippet (the "making of..." DVD is about 20 minutes long) of what the band is like behind the music. The end of the DVD is, however, the coolest.... but that's cause an internet posting I made on [..]about the band is shown. How sweet is that!
Again, if you like Kreator.... buy this!

Kreator's Hordes of Chaos is a masterpiece. It's as simple as that. As soon as the intro to the title track concludes 43 seconds into the song, Sami's riffing will take you. When Mille opens his mouth a few seconds later, you're gone.

More speedy riffs follow and lead right into an extremely catchy chorus, eventually culminating in the chilling "everyone against everyone against everyone" team scream at the end of the song. This impressive track includes some of the best lyrics on the album, and I wouldn't be surprised if it remains a live staple for years to come. It ends on the same mellower riff with which it began, but don't relax yet. "Hordes of Chaos" gives way to Ventor's hammering of the bass drums. Another rapid riff follows, and before you know it Mille is shrieking "Warcurse" into your ears. "Escalation" takes over where "Warcurse" leaves off and leads into the eerie intro of "Amok Run." Mille attempts to sing over the intro, reminiscent of his vocals in the middle of "The Ancient Plague" on Enemy of God. The song gradually builds itself up into the most intense on the album. During the chorus it is IMPOSSIBLE not to thrash. I've yet to listen to this song without kicking something over.

Following a slower, more melodic outro to "Amok Run" (but still with Mille yelling), Kreator hammers the listener with the brutality of "Destroy What Destroys You," another track I can definitely see them playing live for the next decade. Next up is "Radical Resistance" and "Absolute Misanthropy," the two weakest tracks on the album, but still swift thrashers that fit in nicely. "To the Afterborn" slows things down a little bit. It makes up for speed and brutality with a chilling chorus and some scattered shrieking by Mille. "To the Afterborn" spills over into "Corpses of Liberty," a dark instrumental clocking in at just under a minute. It acts as a fine segway into "Demon Prince," which is a solid closer comprising a handful of melodic riffs and an equal number of fast ones. The chorus, again, is extremely catchy.

While the album only contains ten tracks and clocks in at just under 40 minutes, I can't say I felt like it should have been longer. Kreator keeps things moving quickly (and brutally) on Hordes, but they also slow it down in all the right places. As other reviewers have already pointed out, there are many more melodic riffs and hooks utilized here than on previous releases, but they don't take away from the music at all. Instead, they complement the faster, meatier portion of each song excellently.

Hordes also feels very natural. This can be attributed not only to the refinement of each track musically, but to the recording of each instrument simultaneously as opposed to individually (I LOVE when bands do this). The lyrics are solid, as I've come to expect from Kreator, and Mille's vocals are still devastating. While some fans have voiced complaints about his more high-pitched approach on this album (mainly, the screaming/shrieking), I prefer it to his traditional style. It helps keeps things fresh and adds to the intensity of each track.

Of Kreator's three "return to form" albums, Hordes is easily my favorite, surpassing both "Violent Revolution" and "Enemy of God." For any skeptical Kreator fans, hear me now: The critics are wrong. Hordes is pure gold. Don't miss out on a good ass-kicking.

If you, the reader, check out my other reviews, you'll see I'm primarily a metal head, but I delve into lots of different stuff. Hence, I can be a Johnny-come-lately in discovering bands, because nobody my age (48) listens to the heavy stuff, so I'm a lone pioneer.
Why, then, would one still love the heaviness that is Kreator, when some would think it's time to tone it down a bit? Well, because ever since I was a young pup, I've loved hard music, starting with KISS and Aerosmith's "Rocks" and going from there. Bear in mind that in the late 1970's this was very heavy stuff, along with Black Sabbath and Zeppelin.
I play guitar, and I love the instrument and its amazing versatility. With metal in all its variety, you get power, enthusiasm and chops. It still gets my blood pumping. I stumbled on Kreator from a sample CD from Britain's "Metal Hammer" magazine, and bought "Hordes of Chaos" as a cut from that CD was included, and they stood out over the rest of the samples.
Some call this pure thrash, hybrid death/thrash, or whatever. What I hear is a band that sonically is in the same league as Exodus, as fine a purveyor of thrash as there is, and my favorite thrash band, easily out-doing Metallica. So, while not an Exodus derivative, the slashing guitars, the pounding drums and requisite wounded puma vocals make for a great headbanging session.
I don't usually break down each cut, as I tend to view the CD as an overall package. That said, I find the only real fault is the brevity of the CD, at just 38 minutes. I could easily dig an hour's worth of this prime assault. Time to check out some of their other stuff (and I did get the seminal "Pleasure To Kill", which is sonically innovating, but suffers from a poor production). Us old farts gotta keep the blood pressure up.

Kreator has done it aagain, this album is a thrash masterpiece in every sence. This is vintage Kreator.

This is my favorite Kreator album yet. If you like any of their stuff get this one.

This album truly is a triumphant return for these German thrashers, Mille and the boys have been releasing very high quality European melodic thrash metal with absolutely no signs of slowing down. That's nearly 25years of playing extreme no nonsense thrash-metal. Mille still sounds as pissed as a drunken hornet, and Hordes of Chaos is testament to exactly that. Hordes of Chaos represents what I'd call a seamless connection between the more melodic Kreator of this decade and the raw as hell Kreator of the 80's and some from the early 90's. The key is the way this awesome record was produced, this time around the boys used a producer (Moses Schneider) who had the band simply play the songs live in the studio as the foundation for the recording, giving Hordes of Chaos a very live and personal feel to the songs. What Millie said about the new album was that it was a 100% realistic reflection of Kreator's live qualities, and I must say that I totally agree with every single word he's said he's a very wise dude ;-). It works really, really well I mean thrash is supposed to be dirty, raw and unforgiving and not sound wussy and this album from start to finish will rip your face off with it's raw aggression. But it's obviously not just the production that's amazing, Kreator has gotten back to the basics this time around and the songs are short, mean and mostly stripped of unneeded bells-and-whistles. As I mentioned earlier the melodic side of Kreator is certainly still there especially with songs like To the Afterborn, Demon Prince and portions of the title track, but the bursts are mostly shorter and certainly don't stand in the way of the immensely vitriolic feel of the record.

The album is a mix of the old with some modern production work which has a live feel to the songs which brings out the best from them especially on Hordes of Chaos and my favorite Warcurse which is hurtled along at such speed by the great vocals of Millie Petrozza, it feels as if you were falling down a bottomless pit without even time to catch some breath!. This album is in a class of its own which shows why they are part of the infamous German thrash trio of SODOM and DESTRUCTION since there are other songs apart from just the two to enjoy banging your head to especially on the pounding Radical Resistance and Absolute Misanthropy and To The Afterborn whilst a short instrumental, leads into a riff frontal assault on Demon Prince. This is the most aggressive and catchy album Kreator have ever released since Extreme Aggression, at least for this reviewer. Hordes of Chaos is an absolute must-buy for Kreator fans and thrash fans alike, if your a Kreator fan then you should get this immediately, no questions asked!.

After two successful albums, the trend continues with Kreator's newest release Hordes Of Chaos. Rather than rely on Andy Sneap (who helmed their last two albums, as well as a few live releases), the album was produced by Moses Schneider (Beatsteaks, and Tocotronic), and mixed by Colin Richardson (Machine Head, Trivium, Overkill). The entire album was recorded live on a 4-track analog tape recorder for a totally organic sound. This may be a turn-off for those who prefer the clarity of Violent Revolution and Enemy Of God, but they used the same techniques when they recorded Pleasure To Kill in 1986. The results pretty much speak for themselves. It's raw, energetic, and pissed off. If you're new to Kreator, this isn't a bad album to start with. Also check out Violent Revolution, Enemy Of God, and Coma Of Souls.

2.5 Stars

Shockingly inferior to the nearly *perfect* (there's literally nothing that can be criticized) "Enemy of God," probably the best thrash album since the 1980's, "Hordes of Chaos" is basically nothing more than rehashed, "chaotic" riffs thrown together that accomplish very little in the way of melody, structure, or harmony, and unfortunately there's not a whole lot more than can be said about it. It simply sounds like a warmed over retooling of their earlier work, subtracting any songwriting effort while "adding" vocals the poor quality of which Kreator has never before managed, and there isn't a single track on the album I remember after giving it three listens (and you're not going to find them memorable, either, no matter how hard you try). Additionally, the "live" studio production (basically a gimmick to add an incentive to these very unworthy tracks) does very little to aid the "image" the album is trying to present (apparently, it's supposed to be an "attack," the intention of which I still can't decipher), and simply masks the obvious fact that the band didn't put a trace of effort into the songwriting (in comparison to "Enemy of God," one wonders whether or not these tracks were even "written" by the same people). There's simply nothing on this album that's going to grab your attention, and you'll be rolling your eyes at its banality by the fourth track. Boring, rehashed riff meets boring, rehashed riff, and this goes on and on until it's over, after a measly thirty minutes (give or take), and by the end, you'll simply be *stunned* that it was produced by the same incredible band that created "Enemy of God." I don't know what went wrong, or why they devoted such little effort to the songwriting process this time around, but there's little excuse for it, given that it's been four years since their last album (which was released five years after "Violent Revolution," and the extra time, in that case, was highly beneficial, as the band was able to construct twelve standout tracks and compile them into "Enemy of God" (any one of which is far superior to anything on "Hordes of Chaos")).

Ultimately, I doubt that even diehard fans (minus the very small percentage that will inevitably chime in here) of this band will find anything here that validates their devotion to the group (*publicly* defend it as they might (though actually not listening to it more than once or twice)), and will likely find this to be one of the band's least impacting albums (and I'd be surprised if anyone listens to it more than two or three times before forgetting about it entirely). That said, it's probably near par with the average modern thrash album (garbage), but below par for the band, especially after their (again) phenomenal prior release (which completely, single-handedly reestablished thrash as *the* superior sub-genre of metal). We knew that matching "Enemy of God" would prove to be impossible, but the bottom line, again, is that much more effort could have put into the songwriting on this release, and I've got to state that this album isn't merely a letdown, but an insult to their finally-proven talent. My advice to Amazonian metal-heads: forget this album, and buy Kreator's 2005 masterpiece if you don't already own it...it's a truly brilliant album that *must* be acknowledged as such by any true thrash devotee.