Kreator In Klash Of The Titans

In what promises to be a momentous occasion for heavy metal fans down under, two legendary bands, KREATOR and IN FLAMES, are set to embark on a colossal “Klash of the Titans” co-headline tour across Australia in 2024. This monumental collaboration promises to deliver unforgettable performances, showcasing the very best of European metal to fans across the continent.

Kreator, (part of the Teutonic Big 4) with their ferocious and thrash-infused sound, have been a driving force in the metal scene for four decades. They are renowned for their aggressive and uncompromising style that has earned them a place at the pinnacle of the global metal hierarchy. Their performance promises to be a relentless onslaught of riffs and intensity that will leave audiences in awe. It will be Kreator’s first appearance on Australian soil since 2017. Miland “Mille” Petrozza (lead vocals and guitar) talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.

Are you looking forward to Klash Of The Titans with In Flames?
Absolutely, it’s been a while. I think the last time when we came was in 2017. It’s almost six years. My God! Yeah, it’s been a while .

Does the connection with In Flames go back a long while?
Oh, yeah. I’ve known the guys for since 1999, I think first time we met was at Wakken Open Air. It’s been a while. We’ve been hanging at festivals most of the time since then, and we played a lot with them. This is a nice match because we always wanted to tour with In Flames and it never happened. This time it will and we’re really looking forward to this because they have their own very unique style, and the last album was really heavy and so is ours. I think when you come to the show, you’ll see like two totally different bands that both come from the same path, so to speak.

Is there’s any sense of competitive rivalry or anything like that with a double headline tour like this?
There’s not like competition in that sense where but I would say maybe if anything, there’s a friendly competition of course because you want to give one hundred and ten percent and I’m sure that In Flames will want to do that as well. That is more for the fans. We want to entertain the fans. We want to make sure that everybody’s having a fun, great night, so we give it our all. If you want call that competition fine, but I don’t think it’s the right word. I would say maybe we’re pushing ourselves.

It’s like a challenge to go on before or after In Flames, we love that. We love playing with bands that challenge ourselves, and challenge Kreator to give it even more. When you play with such legendary bands and such strong bands, it’s always like when they’re on, you go and watch them, and you’re like, man, that’s fucking amazing. We need to be at least just as heavy and as powerful and as energetic when we go out there and it pushes you. It’s a great way of pushing yourself beyond the limits.

Do you flip a coin to work out who’s going to go on first or second?
I think that’s how it works. It’s a flip flop tour.

What is it that you love about touring Australia?
Everywhere we go it’s always the fans. It’s quite rare that we come to Australia, we’re not playing every year. In Europe you can see Kreator every year, but in Australia you can see greater maybe every five to six years, when we’re lucky every three to four, but that creates like a bond and people are looking forward, we are looking forward. It’s an exciting thing. It’s not our usual tour in a territory where we always play. Australia is at the other end of the world, so it’s hard even to get there. It takes us like twenty four hours or something on by plane to get to Australia. It’s going to be great. I’m so looking forward it, you can’t imagine because it’s been so long. The fans in Australia are very dedicated. The metal scene is awesome and it’s very strong. We’ve been touring Australia since 1992, so there’s a bond there.

Does anything prepare you for that very long flight to Australia?
No, there’s nothing that can prepare you for that. I mean, you just have to go with it. I don’t think we’re coming from Europe directly. We’re playing in Japan before, so it’s not that long. The flight will not be so horrible, but I think our first tour of that run is in Malaysia, so coming from Europe to Malaysia takes a while.

Are you playing mostly the new album Hate Über Alles and some of the fan favourites?
We will definitely do fan favourites and the new album of course, nobody will be disappointed.

Have you been pretty pleased with the fan reaction to the new album?
Absolutely. This has definitely been one of our favourites to record with Arthur Rizk. It’s been almost two years since we recorded the album, but it’s been such a relief if you think about it. We wrote most of the songs in during the pandemic and we were ready to go for a year and then the world shut down for another year. So, the album was there for a while and when we finally got it released, people were really happy and we were happy because we’ve have been carrying the songs around for a while at the time. I was so happy to finally have our fans hear those songs. We’re definitely happy with how the fans reacted to the album and especially in live sense, we’re playing a few songs off the record and the reactions were really cool.

Do you think the Kreator sound has changed much between albums?
There’s always little details that change because you can’t change the style of a band. I mean, we don’t want to change the style of the band because no band sounds like Kreator and why would we fuck with that? Of course, we changed little details. We want to write new and exciting stuff, and there’s some elements that we would use that we haven’t used before, maybe there’s some new melodies, harmonies, vocal lines that we think, or themes that we haven’t talked about. I guess that’s where it changes because it’s a new album, so it should be fresh and new and talking about topics that are current at the time when the album was released, that’s going to happen on the next album as well.

There’s always like new elements, but we wouldn’t want to change our style completely. There’s no reason for that it wouldn’t feel natural. As a band, you can only do what’s inside of you and you can only write the music that you think is exciting and what comes out is it is always, as songwriter when I write a song, it always sounds like Kreator and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

What can you say about the Kreator documentary?
We’re working on the documentary about the band, there’s going to be a team following us around the world next year. They’re definitely going to come to Indonesia with us, I don’t know if they’re going to also come to Australia, but they’ll follow us around in a lot of places. It’s like the life and times of Kreator. It’s going to be interesting and will be a cinematic release. It’s going to be really cool.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Kreator on tour with In Flames on the following dates, Tickets from Metropolis Touring/ Destroy All Lines/ DRW Entertainment…