Endless Pain

Three musicians from Essen had been playing together since 1982 under a run of names — Metal Militia, Tyrant, Tormentor — before settling on Kreator in 1984. This is the first record they made under it. They went into Caet Studio in Berlin in March 1985 and finished recording and mixing inside ten days, with Horst Müller producing, and Noise put the 12-inch out that October as N 0025. The thing that sets it apart in their catalogue is that it has two singers. Mille Petrozza and drummer Jürgen Reil — Ventor — take the lead in turn, song by song, and no later Kreator album is built that way. "Tormentor" and "Flag of Hate" were already in the set before the name change and stayed in it for decades afterwards. The playing and the recording are both rough, and Petrozza has since said he was unhappy with how the album sounds; what the roughness does leave in place is the speed and the pressure, undiluted. Reissues from 2000 onwards append demo recordings made under the Tormentor name, including material from the End of the World demo. The running order listed here is the ten-track original of 1985; the player on this page is the current master, which carries those additions.