Crematory played Wacken Open Air this summer to mark thirty five years, and the pro shot footage that has come out of it is Ravens Calling, sung by Rolf Munkes rather than by the voice most people expect.
Munkes is the band's second singer as well as a guitarist, and handing him a song in the middle of an anniversary set is a small thing that says something about how this band have survived: the clean voice and the growl have always been two people, and neither of them is decoration.
The anniversary came with a compilation in May, Greatest Hits: English Hymns and Deutsche Hymnen, through ROAR, which is part of Reigning Phoenix Music. It runs to three discs, one of songs in English, one of the German versions, and one of the Engulfed In Darkness demo, which is where all of this started in a country that had no gothic metal yet.
The vinyl came in two halves, neon green for the English selection and turquoise for the German, which is as close as a band of this vintage gets to a joke about the two audiences they have always had.