Kreator – At The Pulse of Kapitulation

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SPV
Produced by Niels Folta & Mille Petrozza

With 2008 set to be a quiet year for Kreator from a fan’s point of view (only a few festival appearances occupying their live schedule, and their next album tentatively scheduled for January 2009) At The Pulse of Kapitulation is a welcome release. Essentially it is a DVD re-issue of their now-legendary Live In East Berlin live concert video and the mini horror movie Hallucinative Comas which was made to promote the Coma of Souls album in 1991.

The Berlin concert is obviously the centre-piece, and it’s been suitably re-done for this new release. The original VHS version suffered from pretty poor sound, but the re-editing job here by Niels Folta and singer Mille Petrozza, and the re-mixing by Andy Sneap have massively upgraded the quality of the recording. The video footage remains unchanged and hasn’t aged well in terms of it’s editing style. Too-fast MTV style editing means the footage plays like a montage with a live recording soundtrack, which is unfortunate given the new and improved quality of the audio. While still watchable, and undoubtedly a major piece their history, the video editing severely lets it down.

Following the concert part is a new documentary entitled “The Past And Now”, featuring interviews with several people (none of the band) who were either involved in the making of the concert recording, or who were present at the show. Some of these are in English, some are in German with subtitles in English. Like any “Making of” documentary you either find them interesting or you don’t. I don’t, but if you do this is no different to most others.

The last part is the bizarre “mini horror movie” Hallucinative Comas. What this essentially boils down to is four grainy music videos for songs from the Coma of Souls album (mostly live footage) strung together by short and largely unrelated (to the music) segments of footage featuring a character called ‘Dr. Wagner’ who appeared to be research violence, killing someone to further his research, and getting progressively more insane, featuring no dialogue at all. This has been re-edited by the original directors Hainer Thimm and Andreas Marschall specially for this DVD release but really could have been stripped down to the four music videos and left at that. Fans have been wanting this on DVD though, so this will satisfy them.

It has to be said the best part of this package is bonus the soundtrack CD of the Live In East Berlin concert. It’s easy to hear why this recording became so popular with Kreator fans. The band were outstanding and with the new crystal-clear mix they sound even better and represents the only official live CD from this early half of Kreator’s career.

At full price there’s not enough here, unless you’re a fan of old and have been desperate for a DVD version of this material. SPV have done a good job with this package, especially by adding the CD of the concert, hence the high score, so if you are one of those fans, you won’t be disappointed. If however you don’t already know what to expect from this concert and the movie, try to pick this up a little cheaper as, like me, you will probably derive the greatest enjoyment from the CD.

“ a major piece their history ”

Tracklist:
DVD – Live In East Berlin: Some Pain Will Last / Extreme Aggression / Under The Guillotine / Toxic Trace / Bringer of Torture / Pleasure To Kill / Flag of Hate / Drum solo / Terrible Certainty / Riot of Violence / Love Us Or Hate Us / Behind The Mirror / Betrayer / Awakening The Gods / Tormentor / Documentary “The Past And Now” / Hallucinative Comas Director’s Cut: At The Pulse of Kapitulation / People of The Lie / Dr. Wagner Part I / Twisted Urges / Dr. Wagner Part II / Coma of Souls / Dr. Wagner Part III / Terror Zone
CD – Some Pain Will Last / Extreme Aggression / Under The Guillotine / Toxic Trace / Bringer of Torture / Pleasure To Kill / Flag of Hate / Drum solo / Terrible Certainty / Riot of Violence / Love Us Or Hate Us / Behind The Mirror / Betrayer / Awakening The Gods / Tormentor

Written by Andy Lye
More: Live DVDs, Thrash Metal, Kreator