‘We built a castle on stage complete with fences’: How 80s German thrash bands pushed metal to new dimensions | metal

TThe noise may have been building since the early 1980s, but 1986 was the year thrash metal exploded – exploding like oil on a teenage metalhead’s swollen chin. Slayer, Megadeth and Metallica have all released landmark albums, with the latter trading sparse rock clubs for a series of arena dates supporting Ozzy Osbourne. But while these California acts would change the course of rock music forever, a group of like-minded teenagers were forging their own path 5,500 miles from the center of the genre.

What Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, and Tankard – the “Big Four” of German thrash metal – may have lacked in ingenuity and professional outlook, they made up for in sheer, unbridled aggression. Faster and meaner than most of their American peers, these bands helped set a new standard for brutality while inadvertently influencing the next generation of death and black metal musicians.

“It’s always been rougher and more violent,” says Destruction vocalist and bassist Marcel “Schmeier” Schirmer, a proto-German thrash-style approach. “We never tried to be the best musicians – we tried to write songs that were hits. On English heavy metal albums, it was always the first song on the album and the first song on side two of the vinyl that were the fastest songs. We would listen to those and say, ‘Why can’t there be an album that just has Those songs?

By way of response, 1986 saw the release of Kreator’s sophomore albums (The Joy of Killing) and Destruction (Eternal Destruction), while Sodom unleashed his debut LP, Obsessed By Cruelty.

Founded in 1982, Sodom City was designed as an antidote to a seemingly inevitable career in the mines of Gelsenkirchen. “My dad didn’t want me to be a musician,” vocalist and bassist Tom “Angelripper” says. “When I stopped working in the coal mine, he was disappointed, saying, ‘You can’t make money with this music.’ It wasn’t until Agent Orange came out in 1989 that I got a monthly check.”

Kreator, founded in Essen and also against closed coal mines and steel mills, found itself facing a record deal on the back of a rough demo. “We would spend most of our time rehearsing in the school basement,” says vocalist and guitarist Milan “Mel” Petrozza. “When we did Endless Pain in 1985, we had only played two shows in youth centres, and that was it. We didn’t start touring until after Pleasure to Kill came out.” If their friends in Sodom viewed the coal mines in Gelsenkirchen as a trap, Mel points out that Essen’s industrial heritage offered certain opportunities. “All the coal mines were used for cultural events,” he says. “We practiced there, and I saw bands like Bad Brains there. It was a place of creativity, a lot of theatre, art and music.”

While the relative proximity between Creator and Sodom allowed for a degree of competition, camaraderie, and cross-pollination, the game of destruction came into its own in the small town of Weil am Rhein. “Everything was so conservative and religious that we were trying to get out of it,” Shamir says. “Music was a gateway through which we could escape and forget everything. There were six of us who were early heavy metal fans in our town and formed a small metal scene. It meant we could create something unique.” Schmir and his friends contacted Kreator in Essen, Tankard in Frankfurt and Iron Angel in Hamburg for the gig. And although life as a metalhead in Weil am Rhein may be lonely, the devastation has walked from the beginning. “A guy from our company said it’s not the music that sells records, it’s the image,” says Shamir. “He was right, of course, but we didn’t know it – we really looked like that. I went with my bullet belt and everything to my grandfather’s funeral and my father was horrified. He was like: ‘Get that crap off, you’re embarrassing me in front of the whole village!’

With no local precedent for what they were doing and widespread ridicule from the German music press, the bands were forced to learn quickly. Exposure to more experienced outside bands helped these young men survive: “Slayer taught us how to drink,” laughs Destruction’s Shamir when he was supporting the band on the Hell Awaits tour. “We learned a lot of bad things from them.” The music was also fueled by the likes of Venom (“Their album Welcome to Hell was the spark for the powder keg,” says Angelripper), Judas Priest and early bands like Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys and DRI.

The thrash metal scene over the decade was filled with references to nuclear Armageddon and the potential for the destruction of life. If American destroyers gnashed their teeth about potential annihilation, their German counterparts had a looming reminder of Cold War politics on their doorsteps. “It affected us, of course,” Mel says of living in a Germany divided by the Berlin Wall. “I couldn’t decide how Because he was completely unconscious, but he was always present. The GDR’s strict regime and censorship meant that there was little crossover between the rock scenes on either side of the Wall, although all three bands received enough intermittent fan letters to know that their music was being smuggled east.

“We knew what was happening in the West, but we had almost no contact with the musicians there,” says Peter “Paul” Finke, drummer for the popular GDR metal band Form1, whose only album, Live Im Stahlwerk, was also released in 1986. Older and more experienced than the West German Thrashers, they turned to heavy metal via bootlegged albums from bands from the new wave of the British heavy metal scene. “It became immediately clear that this was our goal,” Paul says. Recorded, somewhat appropriately, in a former steel mill and featuring German-language renditions of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden numbers, the live LP is very lively.

Having met Iron Maiden when the East Londoners toured Poland, Paul recalls being blown away by the band’s visual spectacle as well as the music itself – something he and his bandmates were keen to bring to the Formel 1 live experience. “My graphic designer and I designed the castle courtyard, which we then built, complete with battlements and stairs,” he says. “In East Germany, bands had to have everything themselves; there were no rental services, so we moved tons of equipment all over the country. I still feel sorry for our four technicians.” The band went on indefinite hiatus in the late 1980s when several members applied to leave the GDR, with Paule now playing gigs with Silent Running.

Although Formel 1 may not have gone on to watch the wall come down, in 1990 Kreator became one of the first Western metal bands to play in East Berlin. Despite this, the 1990s were a challenging decade thanks to the rise of grunge and, later, nu metal. Like thrash bands around the world, Kreator, Sodom and Destruction dabbled with different genres and new members while seeing record declines in sales. However, they would all find a new lease of life in the 2000s thanks to the revival of classic hits and the likes of Mayhem, Immortal, Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse recognizing the power of Teutonic thrash.

Today, Sodom is temporarily hibernating as Angelripper takes time to hunt, enjoy life, and work on multiple reissue projects. Meanwhile, Creator has recently been the subject of a documentary and book (co-written by Mel), and their 16th album, Krushers of the World, heralds a massive tour. Destruction has already toured Japan, Thailand and China this year, and is about to head stateside to tour with fellow labels Overkill and Covenant. As for the future? The state of the world suggests that it will be fuel for this type of furnace for many years to come. “I wish I could write, ‘Oh my God, there’s so much peace on this planet, I can’t write words anymore,’ but that’s never going to happen,” Shamir says. “I think we’re doomed to keep writing about how messed up the world is.”