Band: Kreator

Title: At The Pulse Of Kapitulation

Label: SPV

Distribution: CNR Records

Release date: 31/03/2008

Review: DVD + CD

1989. The Iron Curtain falls. It is the end of an era. At the same time, it is the beginning of a new one. In 1990, four well-known bands will perform at the Werner Seelenbinder Halle In East Berlin, a region where the underground Thrash-scene has grown enormously. Those bands: Coroner , Sabbat , Tankard and Kreator . It was a very successful and remarkable happening for every single fan out there, and for the bands too. Kreator at that time must be one of the most important bands in the international scene and their performance was caught on tape back then. Yet until now, it hasn't been released properly, except on VHS with a somewhat abominable quality (sound and visuals). However, to make the long wait for Kreator fans less intense, since the band recently decided to concentrate on writing new material (which will be released at the beginning of next year) and won't be doing many live performances this year, they took the decision to re-release this material, yet not before re-editing everything to achieve a better quality. This work has been done with the superb assistance of Niels Folta and Andy Sneap , who indeed was part of that other band performing in East Berlin back then, Sabbat . This re-issued material has now been put on DVD and believe me: the quality is superb! The visual aspects are of a more than acceptable quality (four long-haired youngsters banging and thrashing) and the same goes for the sound! Not only the material has been created during Kreator 's best musical period (personal opinion, yet I'm just possessed / obsessed by their 80's-era), it gets also performed with such a conviction! Indeed, this must have been a remarkable set back then! I'm sure every (older) Kreator -fan with a passion for DVD-material just needs to get this stuff. Besides, At The Pulse Of Kapitulation not only comes with seventy five minutes of live material, yet it does also contain some bonus material. First of all, you may find a few interviews with people who where there, who give their opinion about the scene back then, the sphere, the whole setting of this event. Secondly, the DVD has a re-issued version of Kreator 's 1991-video Hallucinative Coma , which was a kind of mini-horror movie for the Coma Of Souls album. This long video-clip (in fact, it covers a few tracks and additional action fragments) has been re-edited by Andreas Marshall , the director of this movie, including parts that were censored back then. Nice!

The whole live registration of the 1990-performance has also been put on CD, also with a more than acceptable sound quality - for the CD-not-DVD-fans! …meaning seventy five minutes of high qualitative yet powerful old school Thrash superiority!

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Ivan Tibos.