place themes, but, as is abundantly clear from some of the more remarkable tracks on Past Life Trauma, have their hearts in the right place. When bands like Slayer were getting rich using Nazi iconography to stroke all the ooh-how-
transgressive pleasure centers in their adolescent audiences’ troubled hearts, Kreator was writing songs like “People of the Lie” that called out Neo-Nazis by name and did so openly and bravely:
Don’t look at me as if I didn’t know
Your vanity is all you ever show
What you believe and advocate
Fanatic dogma recycled from yesterday
Got a master plan
Genocide
Can’t understand
People of the lie
You to me are a waste of flesh and blood
I’d love to see you buried in the mud
And when you die no one will shed a tear
So pass me by don’t need your hatred here
Prejudice, intolerance, an eye for an eye
You cannot hide behind those empty claims
Your racist pride is nothing but a game
and you will lose for right is on the side
Of those who choose to fight for humankind
Got a master plan
Genocide
Can’t understand
People of the lie
You can’t believe
Don’t be deceived
(Mille Petrozza, 1990)