CREMATORY

Crematory emerged from Germany among the earliest innovators in the thriving European goth metal environment of the 1990s, having started strictly as a death metal act before folding in goth and industrial textures. The band formed in 1991, and a 1992 demo soon drew the notice of Massacre Records, which put out the debut full-length Transmigration the next year. Shared bills with Tiamat, My Dying Bride, and Atrocity widened their reach, earning repeated plays on MTV Germany and prompting the group to cut its self-titled 1996 Nuclear Blast album wholly in German. Later records such as Awake, Act Seven, and Believe steered Crematory into gloomier, more dreamlike territory weighted toward the gothic side of its sound, yet the act chose to disband in 2001 despite its considerable following.

The return came with 2004’s Revolution, an album steeped in techno-metal drive, quickly followed by a live set documenting the reunion trek. The band re-signed with Massacre for 2006’s Klagebilder and remained there until Antiserum appeared via SPV/Steamhammer in 2014; the thirteenth studio album, Monument, surfaced in 2016. After worldwide touring and slots at nearly every major metal festival plus several smaller ones, Crematory paused briefly, then entered the studio late in 2017 to deliver Oblivion, a release that reclaimed straightforward metal roots. Shortly before its April 2018 release, drummer Markus Jüllich branded fans “lazy asses” on social media, faulting their habit of downloading or streaming instead of buying physical copies or attending concerts and warning that the pattern was unsustainable and would ironically finish the band. Oblivion reached the metal charts and fulfilled SPV/Steamhammer’s sales expectations. Once the tour ended, the musicians immediately regrouped to record and issue Unbroken in March 2020, produced by keyboardist Katrin Jüllich. Though it drew the strongest reviews and opening sales numbers in years, the global pandemic left Crematory, like thousands of other acts, unable to tour.