Kreator was always a band whose name was often bantered about in my punk circle when I was a downy-moustached teen. We were interested in the band because word on the street was they were insanely fast, didn't use falsetto vocals, and weren't satanic or religious in any way. We talked about them a lot, talked about how we needed to hear them for weeks before we actually did.
Across the street from McArthur High School (my alma mater) was a mom & pop record store that specialized in metal called Record Haven. It was in a run-down strip mall. I think the owner was named Irv and he was a surly fucker. He and his wife chainsmoked in the store and the place reeked of nicotene and cat piss. I seldom went in there because of the smell and the fact that they didn't sell many hardcore records, but I was on a mission....Kreator's Pleasure To Kill. I also bought a used copy of Piledriver's Stay Ugly which had appeal even if only ironically. My friend Pat and I sat in my car in the strip mall parking lot ogling the cover, a buff demon pounding the shit out of a pile of hostile skeletons, one of them weilding a pretty menacing looking axe. Fuck, dude. We analyzed every element of the jacket while sitting in the car. We wondered why they were called Kreator when clearly destruction was their forte (later we would learn of another German band called Destruction). We waxed philosophical about the choice to spell the band's name with a "K" rather than a "C." We wondered, we hoped that the album would live up to the promises made by the cover and all our built up anticipation.
When we got the thing back to my house and dropped the stylus, we were immediately pummeled, our faces contorted into huge menacing smiles. Pleasure To Kill was everything we had hoped for and then some. Violent, frantic and always just on the verge of completely falling apart or blurring into a bloody smear. Instantly we understood this band's appeal to punks, and we felt like we were in on a real cool secret. For the next few months Pat and I were obsessed and annoying everyone we knew with the news of the coming of the Kreator.
