Kreator

German heavy metal rock band Kreator grew out of outfits Tyrant and Tormentor in Western Germany in the early 1980s, with singer and guitarist Mille Petrozza, Rob Fioretti on bass, and Jürgen Reil, nicknamed Ventor, on drums. They made their recording debut with Endless Pain in 1985 and have gone through several line-up changes since. Current members Petrozza and Ventor plus Sami Yli-Sirniö on guitar and Christian 'Speesy' Giesler on bass feature on their latest album Gods of Violence, which in 2017 reached Number 6 on the Billboard Hard Rock Albums Chart, Number 8 on the Independent Albums Chart, and Number 19 on the Top Rock Albums Chart.

Lauded for their vigorous thrash-metal style, they became one of the best-known German bands internationally with other albums that landed on the American charts. Their second album, Pleasure to Kill, came out in 1986 with Terrible Certainty the following year and then Extreme Aggression. After Coma of Souls (1990), a change in public taste contributed to a fragmentation of the group until 2001 with the release of Violent Revolution, which won applause from critics and fans.

A concert album, Live Kreation with a DVD titled Live Creation: Revisioned Glory, came out in 2003 with another studio release, Enemy of God in 2005 and others including Hordes of Chaos, which peaked a number 19 on Billboard's Hard Rock Albums Chart in 2009. Phantom Antichrist reached Number 8 on the Hard Rock Chart and Number 47 on the Top Rock Albums Chart in 2012. Following their first Number 1 album on the German charts with Gods of Violence (2017) and the departure of Christian "Speesy" Giessler in 2019, the band entered the studio in 2020 to start working on their upcoming fifteenth studio effort. Released in 2022, Hate Über Alles fared extremely well on the European charts, hitting Number 2 in Germany, Number 4 in Finland, and Number 7 in Switzerland.