KREATOR Frontman: 'We Always Try To Re-Invent Ourselves On Every Record'

Mark Kadzielawa of 69 Faces Of Rock recently conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Mille Petrozza of German thrash metal veterans KREATOR. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

69 Faces Of Rock: How would you describe the musical evolution of KREATOR?

Mille: We always try to re-invent ourselves on every record without re-inventing our sound and style. Being able to write 13 albums that mean something to the people that listen to them is hard. When you do come up with the 13th album, you have ask yourself, "Is it really necessary to release another album? Do I still have something to say?" I mean, I love playing music, and I love expressing myself through the music, but KREATOR has a certain concept. Which means, we found our style, especially with the last three records, from 2001 to now. In the last 11 years we kind of like re-defined our style, and within that musical range we can do whatever we want. There are some influences on the new album that you normally would not expect to find. It's still 100% KREATOR, but it has some influences from classic metal.

69 Faces Of Rock: You've done so much touring all over the years. How do you maintain your voice? After all, singing in KREATOR is quite demanding.

Mille: It's just me. I don't know of any other style of singing. You just have to take care of your voice. I can't abuse hard alcohol. I hardly drink anything. I'm definitely taking care of myself. I try to eat proper food, and I try to go to the gym just about every day when I'm on tour. And I try to just stay mentally sane. I try not to lose my mind on the tour because it's easy to do that. I mean, you go to places where there is nothing, and you have to spend your whole day there. We don't go on until late evening, and there is very little to do before that. You can get easily bored, sometimes it can get very lonely. So I try to look for something positive to do, like going to gym or read a book, or listen to the music, just doing creative things. When you take care of your body and mind, you automatically take care of your voice.

69 Faces Of Rock: You've mentioned eating properly. That's got to be hard going from place to place, months at the time, and depending on fast food places. How do you deal with that?

Mille: I eat only vegan, and I'd rather eat nothing than eat food that is greasy and unhealthy. When the people feel bad, they often don't see the connection with what they eat. Wrong food may cause some very bad diseases, and may cause you to become diabetic. But it's what you put inside your body that causes a lot of that. When I'm on tour, good food is the key for me to stay happy, stay leveled, and have the energy to give my best on stage. It's hard being on tour from that perspective. I tell you this because it is really important to me. But, it isn't just the States, it's sort of a global problem nowadays. I always get money from the promoters to get the food that will make me healthy, and if they order something, I just go out and search it myself. I'm able to find on the Internet where all the vegan places are, so it's not that complicated for me.

69 Faces Of Rock: In the '90s, KREATOR was going through a serious experimental stage. What lessons did you learn from that?

Mille: The experimental aspect of the band is still here, it's just in a different form. We started the band when we were little kids, we were teenagers. So, we never had the chance to try this or that. So, in the '90s, we were like, let's try to do anything we want to do, and we did. We just wanted to do the things that we like. Maybe it was little bit too selfish, or ignorant towards the people who liked the early KREATOR, but we needed to do that. I think the most important part about the '90s albums sounding different is that we experimented with different instruments. On "Endorama", there is even a string quartet. There are all kinds of things happening in the background that was normally not the part of the band like keyboards, loops, samples. That didn't sound natural, because it wasn't a regular element in our music. Our regular setup was always two guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. And when we started to record "Violent Revolution", we said, "Let's do that again. Let's just go in there and play as a band." We wanted eventually to go back to the fast stuff because that's what we're known for, and that's what we do best!

Read the entire interview from 69 Faces Of Rock.