Retro Recommendation: Kreator - Cause For Conflict

Once a week I'll turn the blog over to Dan Marsicano for his Retro Recommendation, giving you a chance to learn about underrated and overlooked gems from metal's past.  This week, Kreator is in the spotlight.

Kreator's late '90s discography is forgettable, to say the least. The band decided that it was a bright idea to take their thrash sound and buckle it down with groove, hardcore, and industrial influences. There is no crime against experimentation, but there is one against terrible music and Kreator was guilty as charged of that on Outcast and Endorama. Before the band would dip into irrelevance for a few years, they put up one last decent album with Cause for Conflict.

The 1995 album was the first and only one without drummer and founding member Jürgen "Ventor" Reil. It's very odd to not hear Ventor on a Kreator album, but his replacement Joe Cangelosi does a credible job of keeping the high standards that Ventor brought to the band. It was also the last album with guitarist Frank "Blackfire" Gosdzik, who had been with the band since Coma of Souls. The guitar work is very restraint compared to past albums, as the solos have a diminished role and the speedy riffs are reserved for moments like the punk-fused "Dogmatic" and "Bomb Threat."

Cause for Conflict straddled the line between their unmitigated thrash beginnings and their odd artistic risks taken after this album. "Prevail" was one of the few tracks that did a noteworthy job of utilizing both aspects. The modern groove metal opening fades into a thrash breakdown that goes so fast that vocalist Mille Petrozza can't keep up. "Catholic Despot" and "Men Without God" follow this stylistic decision to a tee with positive results.

It is when the band steps outside their normal parameters that things get fuzzy. Bland clean guitars and off-putting distorted vocals cripple "Crisis of Disorder," while the spoken word intro and melodic sound of "Sculpture of Regret" are tamed by a criminally-short length. These tracks are outshined by the brilliant closer "Isolation," which takes the minimalist approach and fleshes the songwriting out. Petrozza shows a vocal range far beyond senseless yelling and the downtrodden lyrics speak of individualism and struggling to find one's self in the darkness.

Most of the albums between Coma of Souls and Violent Revolution are barely mentioned when talking about Kreator. Yes, there are some stinkers during this period of over a decade, but Cause for Conflict is far from being a terrible album. The only truly awful thing about the album is that single "Lost" still gets played live instead of underrated tracks like "Prevail" and "Isolation." For being experimental without sacrificing their thrash roots, Cause For Conflict gets the nod for this week's Retro Recommendation.