KREATOR's MILLE PETROZZA: In The Year 2023, War 'Should Be A Thing Of The Past'

In a new interview with Andrew McKaysmith of the "Scars And Guitars" podcast, KREATOR frontman Mille Petrozza was asked to weigh in on what's happening right now with Israel's ongoing war against Hamas after the terrorist group infiltrated the country on October 7, firing thousands of rockets at residential areas and butchering civilians. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "First and foremost, I wish that humanity would be at a different level at this point in time where war is not an option. That's basically all I can say about it, because I think there's always different views on things. There's always reasons why people take violence as an option and start a war or start terrorist attacks or whatever. In my world, this should be a thing of the past, but it's not. And I'm always shocked when I see what's happening in these war zones and I always think it's wrong. And that's basically it. I look at it from not so much of a political point of view, but more of a humanitarian point of view, where I think, on a spiritual level, this should be a thing of the past. And that's basically it. It's a tragedy, and it's a human tragedy and it's something that the human race is cursed with. In my opinion, this shouldn't happen in the year 2023."

McKaysmith also asked Petrozza about the global migration crisis and how much, in his estimation, "the multicultural aspect of migration has affected the West." Mille responded: "Like I said, violence is never an option. And there's always a fluctuation of people coming from countries or going into different countries and moving. Humans were always like that — always. People were moving from one place to the other, and then they were born in one country and then moved to another country. I think that can be a great thing. And culturally, also, sometimes there can be problems. But in my opinion, that's not the problem. The problem is the fact that there's still reasons to act violent and start a terror attack or kind of take violence as an option. And in my opinion, we should be at a different point in the history of the human race. We're not there yet. Spiritually, we're still in turmoil. We're still not in peace."

Mille continued: "There was some certain points in history where you thought, 'Okay, now we could be on the edge of a spiritual awakening,' so to speak, where now things are gonna change for the better, only to learn that in the next minute there's something else happening that's horrible and takes us back into the Middle Ages again. And it's a problem that goes way deeper than into people's political views or whatever. It's more of a human drama."

This past May, KREATOR released a music video for the song "Conquer And Destroy" from their acclaimed latest album, "Hate Über Alles". The performance footage was filmed on March 4, 2023 in front of 6,000 of KREATOR's mighty hordes in their spiritual home of Essen.

KREATOR's fifteenth studio album, "Hate Über Alles", was released in June 2022. The follow-up to 2017's "Gods Of Violence" was recorded at Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin, Germany. Helming the sessions was Arthur Rizk, who has previously worked with CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, CODE ORANGE, POWER TRIP and SOULFLY, among others.

The "Hate Über Alles" cover artwork was created by Eliran Kantor, who has previously worked with HATEBREED, SOULFLY, TESTAMENT, ICED EARTH and SODOM, among others.

"Hate Über Alles" marks KREATOR's first album with bassist Frédéric Leclercq, who joined the group in 2019.

In March 2020, KREATOR surprise-released a new single, "666 - World Divided". The song was produced by Andy Sneap and Markus Ganter and was recorded at Hansa Tonstudios.

KREATOR played its first show with Leclercq in October 2019 in Santiago, Chile.

Before joining KREATOR, Leclercq rose to fame with U.K.-based extreme power metallers DRAGONFORCE for whom he handled bass duties from 2005 until August 2019.