Forgettable Trash - "Pleasure to Kill" Review (0%)
There's Thrash Metal, and then there's trash metal. Know the difference, it could save you 40 minutes of your life.
So here is how my experience of "Pleasure to Kill" went. I got it quite a while ago, a few years I think, in part because I'd heard a lot of good things about it on various mainstream music review sites and in part because the cover was absolutely badass. I was disappointed. Now, all this time later, I've gone back to it to try again, as I feel my tastes in metal music have progressed and developed since then, so maybe this I'll think differently.
Wrong. It still comes across as the same pile of over-the-top, poseurish, hipster inspired, faux brutal, toothless, derivative and exaggerated "look at us, we are eXtreme and copy Sodom!" tripe. It has no redeeming moments, and certainly nothing worth the endless praise it often receives from mainstream music critics whose knowledge of thrash metal is limited to Nightwish and Bring me the Horizon.
"Pleasure to Kill" feels far too much like it's trying desperately to be interesting, beyond its generic nature, and ends up missing the point of music: to communicate a message.
"Pleasure to Kill" is just plain boring. If this is the first metal album you ever hear, it it does sound somewhat brutal and vicious - though Slayer and Beherit do it just as well, while being more talented musicians - but it soon wears thing.
It just sounds too much like one long beat. Individual songs by many other thrash bands have more variation than this entire album! And in truth, even ignoring that blandness, "Pleasure to Kill" way below average at its best.
Forgettable Trash
The riffs may be delivered with a fastish-pace, but this is thrash and they usually are. To me what sells riffs in this genre is not just speed, but technicality and memorability, and "Pleasure to Kill" is severely lacking in both. They have absolutely zero degree of technical flair, to the point of parody, and nothing else to write home about as they're very much lacking in the memorable department given the totally bland and derivative nature of their music, which too often revolves out of a "play faster so they don't recognize our stolen Sodom riffs" idea that's both boring, offensive and born out of resignation to the fact that they are talentless musicians only capable of copying the work of better bands (Sodom, Destruction, Slayer, Bathory).
"Pleasure to Kill" is trying too hard to be extreme, and doesn't carry any of it off. Also, it sounds too much like a precursor to nu metal - particularly with the stop/start nature of the riffs and the hard verse/soft chorus dichotomy later perfected by bands such as Slipknot and Linkin Park - I have trouble liking anything that sounds like it influenced the development of that particular genre. It's also worth noting that, as in a lot of cases, this albums seems to be reviewed by many as a nu metal album without them realising it. How you see something influences it. In short, as thrash metal this is lacking, as extreme metal this is lacking, maybe in nu metal it is seen as something special.
The songs just aren't memorable in any way. They all flow into one another and by the end of the album I feel I've not heard anything interesting or exciting at all. "Pleasure to Kill" added nothing to the genre in its day that Slayer and Sodom hadn't already done better, and by today it's just beyond boring. And not because there are "more extreme" things, but rather because it's trying way too hard to be extreme and doesn't have any of the substance to back it up.
Kreator's "Pleasure to Kill" just feels too simplistic, while even "Agent Orange" - not Sodom's best, by far - shows real intelligence.
I can't really give track specific ratings, because as I say, they all kind of blend into one another. Any points made to one apply to all of them.
Overall, it just seems underdeveloped. Kreator was always seen as a Sodom-clone in the 80s, as a nu metal influence and thus net negative for the genre in the 90s, in the 00s they were big into the "anti-fascism against black metal" scandals which resulted in them being mocked off stage at Wacken, and in today's music scene... they should just retire.
Kreator is possibly the most overrated band in the history of metal, and "Pleasure to Kill" is just a boring and badly generic album made by talentless musicians.
Pleasure to Kill score: 0/100.
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