Kreator

Kreator is a German thrash metal band from Essen, formed in 1982. Their current line-up consists of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Miland "Mille" Petrozza, drummer Jürgen "Ventor" Reil, lead guitarist Sami Yli-Sirniö, and bassist Frédéric Leclercq. The band's line-up has changed multiple times throughout its 44-year career, most noticeably their bassists and lead guitarists. Petrozza and Reil are the only two original members left in Kreator, although the latter left the band in 1994 but rejoined in 1996. Yli-Sirniö has been the lead guitarist of Kreator since 2001, while Leclercq joined in 2019 as the replacement of Christian "Speesy" Giesler, who had been in the band since 1994.

To date, Kreator has released sixteen studio albums, two EPs, two live albums and three compilation albums. They gained a large underground fanbase within the international thrash metal community, with their second studio album Pleasure to Kill (1986) regarded as an influential album of the genre. Many of their subsequent albums — including Terrible Certainty (1987), Extreme Aggression (1989), and Coma of Souls (1990) — were also highly acclaimed. Despite being an influential band, as well as one of the first European thrash metal bands to sign to a major label (signing to Epic Records in 1988), Kreator did not achieve mainstream popularity until later albums, including their thirteenth studio album Phantom Antichrist (2012) and its follow-up Gods of Violence (2017), both of which charted highly in many countries, with the latter reaching number one on the German charts. Their latest studio album, Krushers of the World, was released on 16 January 2026.

Kreator has achieved worldwide sales of over two million units for combined sales of all their albums, making them one of the best-selling German thrash metal bands of all time. Along with Destruction, Sodom and Tankard, they are credited as one of the "Big Four" of Teutonic thrash metal, responsible for developing and popularizing the German thrash metal scene, as well as pioneering the then-emerging death metal and black metal genres during the mid-1980s. The staff of Loudwire named them the 31st best metal band of all time in 2016. In 2025, Zahra Huselid of Screen Rant included the band in the site's list of "10 Best Thrash Metal Bands Who Weren't The Big Four".