Kreator: “We’re living in weird times. It’s horrible. I want to encourage people to enjoy life, even though the world is falling apart”

It’s not lost on Mille Petrozza quite how long he’s been at the metal mill. “Time is running away. The older you get, the worse it gets!”

If you’re looking for a lifer, the proudly long-haired man talking to K! over coffee in his Berlin apartment will do just fine. It’s coming up 44 years since a teenaged Mille formed what would become Kreator in Essen, Germany. Few bands could match them for speed, or wild abandon, or (especially) aggression. The songs may have been titled Flag Of Hate, Pleasure To Kill and Riot Of Violence, but for the young frontman, all this was simply turning up metal’s thrilling vitality.

“I remember when I was a kid, going to see Judas Priest, I came out of the concert and I felt like, ‘Man, this is the best thing in the world. I have so much energy now!’”

Now 58, Mille is an older, wiser man than the cherub-faced kid trying to look evil on the back of Kreator’s 1985 Endless Pain debut, but that effect remains the same. Indeed, he has been the band's only constant. Their new album, their 16th, with the brilliantly boastful title Krushers Of The World, is the work of a band for whom this is simply what life is.

“Some people drift away from it,” he smiles. “They go, ‘I’m too smart for metal,’ or if they listen to metal, they listen to prog-metal. I’m not that way. I love my songs. I love when metal is primal and wild, maybe even a little bit Neanderthal.”

Mille is also a man who uses his outlet as both a chance to say his piece, while also offering a place to batter through the stresses and strains and frustrations of the world. Asked if he’s a political writer, he says not really, preferring K!’s second suggestion that “social” might be a better word.

On Seven Serpents, he looks at “something negative that surrounds you”. Psychotic Imperator, meanwhile, “talks about this evil entity that could be a politician, it could also be some really fucked-up person from the past, like Nero, but also could be somebody more current, but they’re fucked-up!” On the feral Satanic Anarchy (“A very Kreator title,” he grins), he simply wanted to create a pressure valve for a world going weird.

“I wanted to create a vibe of hope and of positivity,” he explains. “Not escaping reality, but getting away for a little bit from all the horror and from all the negativity in order to help deal with it. I’m not saying that you should close your eyes to these things, but I think it can all coexist.”

This is a wise and more realistic view than just sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending things aren’t happening, or insisting that a smile is all you need. Alongside metal, the young Mille was into hardcore, where he heard legendary DC act Bad Brains singing about Positive Mental Attitude. It’s not, he says, about “toxic positivity, saying everything’s cool when it obviously isn’t”, but “taking things in your own hands and just trying to deal with stuff in an adult way, without killing your inner child”.

“To me, the album title means empowerment, rather than hiding away,” he says. “We’re living in weird times. It’s horrible. Politics are shit. There’s wars and all that stuff. It’s really, really bad. Rather than complaining and moaning about how bad things are, we wanted to find a title that encourages people to just enjoy metal, enjoy life, enjoy everything, even though the world is falling apart.”

There’s a similarity here to the world into which Kreator first arrived in the ’80s, first under the name Metal Militia, then Tyrant, then Tormentor. At the time, with the Cold War still looming, Germany was cleaved in two along The Wall, the literal manifestation of the blunt, hard Iron Curtain. Mille and his bandmates lived in the free, capitalist West, and got to cross into the East to visit family, a luxury that didn’t go in the opposite direction.

“We were very aware of why Germany was divided, and we were very aware of the situation,” he recalls. “It was weird, I can’t think of many countries where there’s a wall dividing it. We knew it was special, we knew it was wrong.”

It was, however, not a bad time to be a music fan. When he was 12, Mille saw KISS with a budding Iron Maiden opening, and Judas Priest on the Point Of Entry tour. Germany’s own scene may have been smaller than that of the UK or America, but in a time where metal was about bigger, badder, faster, harder, louder, it was easy to dream as well.

“When we started, we had goals, but I mean, it was all a dream,” Mille says. “I remember I was at school, I would draw myself on a stage with, like, 14 Marshall cabs. That was a dream, I was able to afford probably one!”

He also remembers buying his first guitar for what would have been about 200 quid, and his mates doing the same, the result being that he had a band with five guitar players. Eventually, as fewer people came to rehearsal, something approaching a normal line-up was born. Quickly, with a growing reputation for aggression, they headed to Berlin to record. Again, Mille says part of this was simply the adrenaline of youth.

“We were very young, and I guess we had this energy in us that was uncontrollable. Even in the studio, I would go into the vocal booth and just scream without thinking about it. Everything you hear on the first album is pure teenage euphoria. ‘Man, this is so great! We’re in Berlin, recording an album! Wow!’”

He jokes that part of the reason why Kreator got the respect they did was because “in the ’80s, a lot of bands would do one fun song, one goofy song. We never had a goofy song. Maybe that’s why people took us seriously.”

That will only get you so far. Forty-odd years in, it’s because, simply, Kreator are very good, and because Mille takes what he’s doing seriously. A vague Plan B was started by studying at business school, but was never needed. As well as making at least one (at least) essential, groundbreaking thrash milestone in 1986’s Pleasure To Kill, Kreator have never put out a stinker. They are, by some distance, the biggest of German thrash's Big Four, rounded out by Destruction, Sodom and Tankard. Among their many achievements, they're also notable for being the first metal band to visit post-Pinochet Chile, following the collapse of the dictator’s regime.

In 2026, Kreator are still on the up and up. The first time they visited London, in 1988, was opening for Celtic Frost at what was then Hammersmith Odeon, now the Eventim Apollo. When they hit the capital in March, they’ll be headlining the 5,000-capacity O2 Academy Brixton.

Mille himself, though a self-evidently dedicated and hard worker, retains something of being just a fan who managed to get onstage. He gushes about the times they’ve played with Maiden and Ozzy, as well as naming High Vis as one of his favourite new bands, having caught them at a recent Turnstile gig in Berlin. When we ask again about what’s kept him wanting to do this for so long, the answer is simply that time ran away with him while he’s been doing it.

“It is the music that carries me through the years. You start as a teenager, and all of a sudden – bam! – 20 years have passed, 30 years have passed, and now 40 years have passed. I just love music, and I don’t take this for granted. I’m so happy that I’m able to do what I love, and that’s where the enthusiasm and the passion comes from.

“It comes from the passion for metal around the world as well. I have a lot of friends that do singer-songwriter stuff, and they don’t have that community behind them. It’s gift that we have such a strong worldwide tribe behind us. And every time we come up with something, there’s a million people that are interested. That’s amazing.”

Time is, indeed, running away. But when you’re a lifer, like Mille, like Lemmy, like Ozzy, that just becomes a number. Everything else takes care of itself.

“Once you find something that you love, you just stick to it. There was no plan B. There was never like, ‘Okay, if this doesn’t work out, I’m gonna do this.’ I never had a doubt in my mind. I knew that it’s gonna work out. Not like a business plan, or a career plan, or management that would go, ‘Yeah, then we do this, and strategically, we can do that.’ None of that.

“I just had a very strong belief.”

Krushers Of The World is released on January 16 via Nuclear Blast. Kreator return to the UK in March.

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