At the Mehr! Theater in Hamburg, the Kreator, Sepultura, Soilwork and Aborted  tour stopped by on February 4th to unleash hell.

The venue was half-filled when the first  Aborted took the stage. They started with “Denive Impediment” and “Cadaverous Banquet” from their latest record ‘Retrogore’. I liked the performance of the guys on stage, but the sound wasn’t good at all and the crowd enthusiasm seemed deflated. Nevertheless, the final song “Bit by Bit” of Aborted gave some life to the audience as well as a wall of death to finish the show.

Soilwork were up next and they began with “The Ride Majestic”.  A mosh pit started from the opening guitar riff and headbangers could be easily located. But once again, the sound let down the performance and it appeared most in attendance in agreed. Cymbals, keys and some parts of the guitars were difficult to perceive, killing much of the nights enthusiasm.

Two tracks from their new album ‘Machine Messiah’, : “I Am The Enemy” and “Phantom Self” acted as the opening moments for the mighty Sepultura. The audience went crazy from the first second and created a big mosh-pit. If the sound was awful again, it was a bit better than before. The set-list was awesome and a wide spectrum of the Sepultura catalogue made appearances. The oldest one “Inner Self” from the ‘Beneath the Remains’ record made quite an impact on the crowd! Front-man Derrick Leon Green, despite some broken German, spoke some native tongue that resonated with the crowd. Derrick played a few times on a large, percussive floor tomb during certain tracks which only added to the energy of set-list highlights such as “Refuse/Resist”, “Arise”, “Ratamahatta” and “Roots Bloody Roots”. Yet again, the sound was the shows main downfall.

Headliners Kreator entered to their intro music as the audience pushed forward before the band launched into “Hordes of Chaos”. Head-banging, moshing and confetti canons, an awesome start to the show!
An impressive light show and video sequences in the background gave helped in creating an added sense of mood to the songs live. Additionally, it was the best sound of the evening. Newer track ‘Gods of Violence’ acted as a good mix within the more well-known stuff and newer ones also.

Kreator ended with the powerful “Extreme Aggression” and “Civilization Collapse”. The audience screamed for an encore and they got one! The encore was filled to the brim with really old-school material with songs like “Flag of Hate”, “Under the Guillotine” and “Pleasure to Kill”. Needless to say, the crowd went crazy. Their performance, stage arrangements,  visualization effects among other things all added to mood of the crowd which needed to end the night on a big high and what they got was a very fine show at the end of the evening!

It was a fine evening at the venue Mehr! Theater in Hamburg. The sound was bad the most time, a pity, but it all came together in time for Kreator. In general, it was a very nice evening with a combination of bands that made for a great line up.