KREATOR Vinyl Records and CDs

Granted, you've got to be a fan of this stuff to really appreciate it, but if you are, then listening to 1986's Pleasure to Kill or its follow-up, Terrible Certainty will be as painfully pleasurable an experience as losing your baby teeth or picking a scab. Considering the short distance between these releases and Venom's Black Metal, it's impressive that riffs so dense and drumming so exhausting were so quickly realized. '80s Kreator is a delirium inducing experience of snarling vocals, tumultuous time changes and G-pulling guitar solos. Buckle yourself in! Entering the '90s, the band eased off from their "blastbeat here and a blastbeat there" approach to explore thematically more sophisticated terrain than routine gore. If you want to start with this down-ratcheted material and work your way up to the Voivod-esque extremes, Renewal is a good spot to wade in. By this point, the band had the confidence to write actual songs with coherent lyrics and trimmed down solos that still pack the wallop of rebar.