Review of the Album "Outcast" by German Thrash Metal Band Kreator

Of all the Kreator studio albums, Outcast released in 1997 is one of the few albums from this band that I have not yet reviewed until now and the Kreator journey continues. Is this album similar to Endorama? The one thing that is evident early on in this album is that it has little of the thrash metal elements of the band’s early years and by this time, Mille Petrozza is fully developed as a vocalist.

By the third song in this album, we also see that Kreator has slowed down their musical pace and some of you may be wondering what happened to their thrash metal pace of play? It is pretty good to assume that Kreator was experimenting musically like several other bands in the late 1990’s.

Outcast begins with a rock style song called “Leave This World Behind.” If the world is such a cold place as the song implies and we could have wings to fly out of it, where else could we go to? As of this moment in time, Earth is the only planet in the solar system that can support human life to such a great degree. “Phobia” is a mid-tempo rock song that sees Mille Petrozza sounding even more differently than we have heard him before, almost like he is straining his voice to utter the word “phobia.”

The third song Forever sounds a little bit like a more modern version of an early Black Sabbath album because of the riffing even though it is more modern and there is no doom metal influence in it. The song called Black Sunrise features Mille trying something he has not done as much and that is to use softer vocals. The song lyrically is about the world getting darker as he is not able to see the light anymore. Life has gotten much harder for the person mentioned in this song. It feels like we get overwhelmed by the circumstances of life and it drags us down. Does the album Outcast seem like it is Kreator’s St. Anger moment? To some fans it may seem like it because they are used to hearing Kreator be fast, heavy, and technical but even in their experimentation years, they did sound like a heavy metal band. Outcast and Endorama are lighter than most of the albums by the band but they are still good for a listener that keeps an open mind. “Whatever It May Take” has a beginning bass line that sounds like a lighter version of Pantera but us more progressive in nature. We cannot allow society to bring us down to our knees and take away all that we have. In the middle of the song, the bass guitar is even better and more audible than before.

Alive Again is a good groove filled song about what happens when a person overreacts and becomes an emotional psychopath. That person loses their sense of direction and cannot be “alive” in the way that they should. Overall, Outcast is different, experimental mid-tempo based kind of heavy metal album from Kreator but that should not dissuade you from listening to this album and appreciating it for what it is musically.