Gods of Violence

This is Kreator's fourteenth album, released on 27 January 2017. Almost five years had passed since Phantom Antichrist in 2012, the longest gap of their career at the time and a record that stood until Hate Uber Alles in 2022. It is also the last studio album with bassist Christian "Speesy" Giesler, who left in 2019. The weight given to melody on the previous record carries over, with larger structures and more places where a choir comes in. Songs like "Hail to the Hordes" and "Fallen Brother" push on elation rather than speed. A video for the title track went out ahead of release on 18 November 2016, and special editions came with a Blu-ray or DVD of the band's 2014 Wacken Open Air performance. It entered the German album chart at number one, the first time they had done that in thirty-two years of making records, and it won the 2017 Metal Storm Award for best thrash metal album. Fraser Wilson, writing for All About the Rock, said that thrash may have been born in the San Francisco Bay Area but it was perfected in Essen.