KREATOR Frontman: For Me, It Never Felt Like Thrash Metal Went Away

On September 11, Andrew Schizodeluxe of The Rock Pit conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Mille Petrozza of German thrash metal veterans KREATOR. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Rock Pit: Well, let's talk about the new DVD, "Dying Alive". How did the idea of this new DVD come about?

Mille: Basically, it was the middle of the tour that we felt it went very well, we had many people at the shows and we knew it was a huge production and we wanted to give fans something back, like the memory. We felt this was the perfect time after 10 years of our last official DVD release, "Live Kreation". We felt it was about time to come out with a new live DVD/live record package and we talked to the record company about it and they supported us and went along. We got a team of 24 cameras into the Turbinenhalle in Oberhausen, which is very close to where we live, and we had full control over everything that happened to make sure that the quality was 100% guaranteed.

The Rock Pit: Watching the live show on the DVD, there seems to be so many cameras around, you seemed to have captured every angle possible. Was that the band's idea or was that someone else's idea?

Mille: That was our idea — ours and the director. We talked about this for a long time and we definitely wanted to make sure that... I mean, it's always different to when you are in a room and watch a band, it's a different feel than being in your living room and watching it from your sofa or whatever, so we wanted to make sure that we got an impression of what it's like to come to a KREATOR show.

The Rock Pit: I ask this question with a few other thrash bands regarding the recent resurgence of thrash metal in general. Obviously, the genre has never gone away but it seems to have crept back in a big way recently, which we haven't seen in quite some time. What's your take on this new interest in the genre?

Mille: For me, it never felt like it went away. It quietened in the '90s, but that was metal in general, but now it's stronger than ever because people have grown up. A lot of the bands that have been around back then that are still around are a little more controlled with how they handle things and they are more experienced. It comes down to the music. Now they live by fans that have grown up with this kind of music. Back in the day, neighbors were like strangers to this music and so the whole industry has changed. In my opinion, it has a lot to do with self-confidence nowadays; it's a whole different deal. Nowadays, we are more confident in what we do and I think I can speak for a lot of the bands, a lot of the old-school thrash bands that nowadays when you get the feedback from the new generation of bands, it gives you a lot of energy.

The Rock Pit: Obviously you did a bit of experimenting in the '90s and then came back to the thrash sound. Do you think you would ever try a different direction again or do you think you will stay in the thrash genre?

Mille: I think we experiment within our music. In the '90s, we experimented on a whole album, nowadays we experiment within certain parts of certain songs but people don't see that experimenting as much as we did in the '90s. A lot of the elements, like in "Phantom Antichrist", for example, is something that we took from that era and put it into our new music, so it's always in motion. Our music always develops and we can look back on many, many hours that we have tried, riffs or melodies that we tried in the '90s and we still profit a lot from that. It was not for nothing, even though some of the '90s experimental albums weren't that well received by the audience, for us, musically, it made us grow.

Read the entire interview from The Rock Pit.