Just like every period of time has it's own heroes and kings (let alone villains), every musical genre has it's very own heroes as well. People, whose names should be inserted into the Golden Books and whose statues should be exhibited in the Golden Halls Of Fame of the respective genres. Worship their names, blow any piece of dust off their statues, but, in case you'd like to keep their names sacred, don't try to approach them too closely and get to know them personally. Otherwise you would run the risk of seeing their nimbuses disappearing into thin air and your idols turning out to be the human beings made of flesh and blood, not that very different from yourselves. Mostly quite friendly and sincerely amazed by such interest to their humble personalities. Sometimes a bit strange and unpredictable, but true artists are allowed, even bound to be a little different. "Don't shoot at the piano player", as an ad in an ancient silent films would say.

When it comes to Thrash, perhaps it wouldn't have been very different from what it is if it wasn't for Frank Gosdzik (or Frank Blackfire if that's how it sounds more familiar to you), but some of the classic albums of this genre definitely wouldn't have been the same. Or wouldn't have existed at all. Frank Gosdzik was born on February 24th in 1966 in Essen, Germany, an industrial area called Ruhr-Valley overcrowded by steel factories, coal mines and later also famous Thrash bands. It seems like not only German blood of his mother Lilo Greisner and Polish blood of his ancestors from father Harry Gosdzik´s side, but there also was a considerable portion of Metal infected blood flowing through the veins of little Frank. As all of us know from many years' experience, Metal blood never simply flows peacefully - it boils, so already at early age of 6 our young music lover used to enjoy rebellious rock'n'roll sounds coming from the radio. As it would become evident later, from the metalhead's perspective little Frank's upbringing was undoubtedly "right", thus step by step evolution (or degradation, as the evil tongues would say) towards the most extreme Metal genre at the time was absolutely natural and predictable. "I started listening to old rock'n'roll like Little Richard, Carl Perkins very early, 6 or so, with 12 I liked more and more hard rock, like DEEP PURPLE, RAINBOW, old SCORPIONS and of course AC/DC, a little later JUDAS PRIEST, SAXON, IRON MAIDEN, also MOTORHEAD, then ANVIL, MERCYFUL FAITH til I heard SLAYER's "Hell Awaits", that was cool stuff, at that time I started playing fast riffs."

Yet life is a bit more complex thing than the bunch of written words, so what fitted into several lines here and took you seconds to read had taken years for our young metalhead to go through. There should have been some push to make the transformation from music lover to music maker and performer, and that push came in 1980 in the form of an AC/DC show: "After a show of AC/DC in 1980 Mr. Angus Young impressed me so much that I pestered my mom to buy me a guitar (it was right before Christmas), so finally she bought me one, that's how everything started." The delicate process of taming his Christmas present demanded pretty much in every imaginable sense, but from the very first day Frank was sure that it was exactly "his" thing and nothing could stop an upcoming Metal star: "When I got my first guitar, it was a Strat copy, at the age of 14, I didn't know anything about it, not even a single chord. I tried and practiced my ass off every day, some friends showed me a little bit here and there, but up to this day I never had any guitar lesson, I always picked a little bit from watching other bands or guitarplayers. Inspired by Guitarplayers like Angus Young, Richie Blackmore and Carlos Santana, I bought a book of basic-blues-lead-guitar. My first amp was a tube radio because I didn't have the money to buy a real guitaramp, only a little later, when I was around 16, I saved any money I could get to buy my first Marshall-top. But I didn't have a box yet, so I blew any kind of speakers I connected to the amp til I bought real 12 inch guitarspeakers, piece by piece, when I had money, to built a 4x12´´box that finally could stand the power of the amp."

Following an inexplicable tradition of musicians to bunch up, Frank soon began to search for company of others of the same kind. At first he used to drag anyone he had managed to spot with an instrument in his hands into his parents' backyardhouse, the place that had to suffer a role of a rehearsal place for a couple of years, up to summer 1984 when the first more or less "real" band (at least the first whose name the man himself has found worth to be mentioned) appeared at the musical horizon of our slightly grown up hero. The romance with the band called WIDIA lasted for two years: "I guess I joined them in summer 1984, we played covers of JudasPriest, Saxon and later own material in this style of classic metal. I had a lot of fun and we partied a lot at that time. We never played any gig together and I left them in summer of 1986."

At the same time and at the same place there was another band practicing. Unlike WIDIA, it's name was known much better and sounded so much louder: SODOM. They already had a couple of vinyls under their heavy riveted belts, so no wonder that many young guitarists would have been absolutely happy to join them no matter what. Many, but not Frank. Most of the fans hardly have any idea about it, but for Frank himself it was evident from Day One that Sodom wasn't actually "a band of his dream": "While I played with WIDIA, SODOM practiced in the same building and we already knew them, so when their guitar player Michael Wulf left the band they were hangin out at our rehearsals. When they first asked me to join them, that was when "Obsessed by Cruelty" was out, I said no thanx, it's too noisy, but Mr. Witchhunter really wanted me in the band, and then I thought I could write tunes my way and I was crazy to play live on stage, so I joined them, that was in summer 1986." Fortunately, those temptations turned out to be too enticing to reject in the end. Otherwise I, as a typical representative of the old thrashers, am afraid to even think of how we could live without those SODOM records which owe too much to Frank's composing and playing skills: "Expurse Of Sodomy", "Persecution Mania", "Mortal Way Of Live" and "Agent Orange". By the way, it was exactly at that time when Tom Angelripper baptized Frank with a new name, the one which would stick to him for much longer than the latter would like it to: Blackfire.

Already the first effort with his participation, namely maxi-single "Expurse Of Sodomy", clearly indicated a more professional approach to the material and it's delivery. Chaos of early SODOM stuff got a bit structured and an impenetrable wall of sound and well controlled, yet no less brutal and raging riffs arose. It was evident that with Frank's entrance SODOM were heading for the new heights, and released full-length killer "Persecution Mania" in the end of the same year which justified the most optimistic hopes of the band's fans. Frank's threat to twist SODOM sound his own way was fully realized at this album, so up to this day listening to his guitar I can't get rid of the feeling of dealing with something alive. Try to touch this "something" with an idle finger only to have it thrown back by that thick pulsating substance. That substance seems to be a kind of alive organism - breathing, moving, waiting. Waiting for those dedicated enough and willing to try and comprehend it's inner essence. If you are the one, little by little you'll find yourself bewitched by it and drawn inside. There's no way out, but… well, do you really need it? Some captivities seem to be too sweet to dream about breaking free.

Next year came to make another dream of Frank come true. Accompanied by excellent, but always underrated American speed/thrash alchemists WHIPLASH, SODOM spent 3 weeks touring Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland. For both bands it was the first "serious" tour, the guys were pretty young and hungry, so no wonder that it turned out to be great fun and up to this day the "Beat The Meat" tour awakens many fond memories in it's participants. The audience had little to complain too, as Thrash hurricane delivered by the united forces of two bands was leaving none alive in clubs and halls night after night. In case you were either too young, too stupid or at least too unfortunate to miss that tour, check out a part of it captured on the "Mortal Way Of Live" album released by the end of the same year.

The next studio effort "Agent Orange" stroke around spring 1989, displaying even more professional perfection than it's predeccesor and establishing SODOM as recognized Thrash authority all over the world. The Fatherland welcomed their heroes with open arms as well - the album entered the German charts and stayed there for some weeks. But what seemed to be a perfectly working machine when looked upon from outside, from inside didn't seem so perfect. It's no big secret that Frank had never felt himself completely "at home" in SODOM, so the radical decision should have been made sooner or later. It happened soon after the release of"Agent Orange": "At that time, after we recorded "Agent Orange", I couldn't stand it anymore, playing with those guys, so finally I left the band, that was in July of 1989. I was pretty inexperienced and young, but always tried my best and practiced my ass off , I wrote 98% of the music while they preferred to drink beer."

At the same time Frank's good friends from KREATOR were experiencing some problems with their second guitar player as well, so it took less than a month to come to the most natural decision to unite their forces: "I knew Mille already from the time when I joined SODOM(86) and always met him here and there at some places (he lives in Essen too), the same with Rob. In summer 89 I was hanging around with him and other friends almost every day. At the time they also had problems with their guitar player Tritze and so we both thought it would be a good thing to play together." That good thing turned out to be not so easy to accomplish though due to the contract Frank had once signed with SPV, so the process of exchanging camps was escorted by a textbook example of neverending confrontation of Art and Business. In this case Art was represented by Frank and his new teammates from KREATOR, and Business by SPV chief Manfred Schuetz. 40000 DeutschMarks went to the pockets of Mr. Businessman, that was the price of freedom. Anyway, some filthy lucre couldn't stand an onslaught of real Metal, the one that sets the hearts on fire: "The good thing was that KREATOR helped me out and shared their money with me, a really good friendship. We didn't give a shit about the money and showed them bloodsucking label-bosses the sticky finger, we only wanted to conquer the world with our music. Til today I really appreciate what the guys did."

There were 3 weeks and 18 tunes to learn, and renovated KREATOR supported by CORONER went off to conquer the States: "It was a little new for me to learn Mille's riffs, but I got into it pretty quick and after 3 weeks of rehearsals we played the "Extreme Aggression" Tour in the U.S." Another memorable event took place on 4th of March in 1990 in East Berlin. Along with TANKARD, CORONER and SABBAT, KREATOR performed there at the biggest Metal festival ever held in Eastern Germany timed to breaking down the wall between East and West Germany. Mille presented to the huge audience their new (must be "new" only for local fans though, as by that time Frank had already been playing in KREATOR for more than half a year) guitarist Mr. Frank Gosdzik, and the latter started old classic "Under The Guillotine" with absolutely killer riff and such a passion, as if it was his own tune (and you should have watched him performing "Tormentor" with your own eyes!). I believe that hour on Werner Seelenbinderhalle's stage isn't going to be erased from the man's memory very soon, if at all.

The first KREATOR studio album starring Frank came out in October of 1990 in the shape of "Coma Of Souls". It was a piece of matured vigorous thrash, solid as a rock and confident as a skilful pro. Frank's guitar made perfect company with Mille's one and the rest of Kreator's weaponry, bringing forth an impression of the musicians born with the instruments in their hands and destined from on high to play together. But wasn't the sound of "Coma Of Souls" a bit too clean and accurate, especially keeping in mind what the early Thrash had been all about? A couple of you old bores truly used to whine and complain about that here and there, but all in all it surely couldn't overshadow that monumental work and prevent it from drawing much wider audiences and recruiting new legions of young thrashers the world over. Those abilities were exploited up to the maximum during "Coma Of Souls" tour, which covered not only the usual Europe and U.S.A., but also more exotic territories like Israel or South America (which would play very important role in Frank's life some years later).

1992 saw the release of the most unusual of KREATOR's efforts by that time, "Renewal". While "Coma Of Souls" could be seen as a logical continuation of "Extreme Aggression", this one dared to touch the territories never touched before, to walk the paths never trodden previously. Well, KREATOR have never been about boredom of predictability and self-plagiarism, but nevertheless the new album turned out to be quite a painful experience even for the most devoted fans of the band. A Terrifying impact of modern influences was too evident to be ignored: the touches of hardcore in vocals and especially the industrial touch in the music entered into the once so pure and genre defining KREATOR's way of thrash and made lots of fans confused beyond recovery. To sum it up, the band's renewal wasn't accepted that easy.

It's never easy to make yourself break the stereotypes you used to stick to for years, to make yourself grow upon your own limits, to develop, to progress. But when you finally manage to win that internal war, there's still a battle waiting for you, especially when you are a musician: a battle for your progress being accepted by those who aren't indifferent to your art. KREATOR dared to challenge their fans' faithfulness, at least that's how "Renewal" could be seen, and looking back at that album now, ten years later, it's pretty safe to say that a step like that was very important for the band. It didn't let the band to stagnate and forced both the musicians themselves and their fans to look at KREATOR from a bit different angle.

Having played the usual tour, this time it covered Europe, Japan, Australia, U.S.A. and South America (and in 1993 the German thrashing brigade even came to Moscow, where they were sincerely amazed to discover how many fans they had in Russia and how crazy and hungry for real Metal those maniacs were), the band disappeared from a spotlight for a couple of years and it seemed long enough for many people to consign KREATOR to oblivion. Rare news coming from the band's camp weren't any comforting either. Soon after "Renewal" tour bass player Rob Fioretti, one of the founding members, decided to concentrate on his family life (he had his second child born at the time) and left the band. Then in 1994 another original KREATOR musician had to leave, this time it was drummer Jurgen Reil, or simply Ventor. As if it all wasn't enough, Noise International, their label back then, wasn't making life much easier for the band either. The struggle for freedom took lots of nerves and a couple of years, so it wasn't until 1995 when KREATOR were able to put up a new album.

Still there always must be something good in any bad thing, happening or whatever, and in this case the departure of Ventor let Frank to talk Mille into trying his long time friend Joe Cangelosi, who used to beat the shit out of his drum-kit in WHIPLASH (remember SODOM/WHIPLASH tour in 1988?). Joe had been living in Germany for a couple of years, cooking some Mexican stuff in an American restaurant in Koln and playing around with some jazz and progressive projects. It was his last working day before a flight back to the States when he got a phone call from Frank with a proposition he couldn't reject (though, to be exact, he tried). In fact, he already had a ticket on a plane to New York in his pocket back then!

The new album entitled "Cause For Conflict" saw the light of day and the shelves of stores in the autumn of 1995. All the accumulated frustration and anger, pain and disappointment were put into that album, turning it into much more aggressive and impetuous effort than it's predecessor. An interesting feature of "Cause For Conflict" must have been it's versatility: literally anything KREATOR used to be celebrated for could be found here to a greater or lesser extent. An album for more kinds of fans than the band had managed to draw for years? Both yes and no. In any case, it was not a pitiful prayer to the fans to feel sorry for the band and give it one more chance, but rather a kind of another "love us or hate us" ultimatum. Such prominent musicians as Mille Petrozza, Frank Gosdzik and Joe Cangelosi could definitely afford that. In fact, they could afford anything except for the freedom to make a weak album - professionalism is a very difficult thing to hide. The entrance of Joe, whose style was pretty different from Ventor's, brought much more variety to rhythmic structures, giving the sound of KREATOR even more unpredictability and depth. It turned out to be very complicated music, by no means an easy listening stuff, so again a part of the fans had to leave, unable to pretend to be open-minded enough to accept the next turn of the band development's wheel. Besides, one of the main problems of "Cause For Conflict" must have been the fact that the young metalheads had their own heroes and for the old ones belonging to the same generation as KREATOR that album sounded too modern anyway. Nevertheless the musicans themselves considered it to be another important step on the road leading ahead, so is there any use trying to argue about that?

A year later internal relations became so strained that it finally led to the situation where the band literally splitted in two camps. And when two halves doesn't fit to form a solid whole anymore, there's no use in trying to put them together by force: "We had different ideas at that tim,e that didn't fit together, everybody's personality developed in different ways and it was better to split." Having left KREATOR in the autumn of 1996 Joe went back to the States and Frank used his freedom to experiment with the projects not that usual (especially bearing in mind his thrashing youth): "I played for a while in an atmospheric-metal-band but we never did a show, at the same time I joined an ethnic-experimental-psychodelic-project with lots of percussions called AKU-VIPES, 80% of the music was improvised, we did some small club-gigs. Later I left them and continued this kind of music with two people I met, they became very good friends of mine, we called us BAHIANOS. At the same time I had another trio, I wrote some funky-jazzy-hard-rock tunes and we added more covers like blues til hard rock to play gigs, there I already assumed the part of the lead vocals." I wonder if it's just me or is it a general rule that the musicians are so much more open-minded towards the other musical genres than their fans are?

Obviously Frank's craving for anything exotic led not only his heart and soul to such unusual musical forms, but also his flesh and blood to no less exotic (at least for native European) land: "I was a little fed up with Germany, used to live there for my whole life and wanted to live in a different place. Since the first time I played here with KREATOR I liked Brasil and always wanted to stay here for a longer time, to live and meet all these different places. I planned to go to Brasil at the beginning of 2000 and arrived here in São Paulo on the 28th of October in 2000. I like it pretty much over here and I think it's a beautiful country that has a lot of things to offer." Anyway, his Metal roots turned out to be too deep to remain forgotten, so even in a faraway beautiful land it was just a matter of time for them to reveal themselves: "Here I played in a band called GANAZAMBI which played an ethnic-latin-funky-brasilian style with heavy-rhytm, but the band later broke up after the recording of a 5-track-demo-CD. I also was invited to many jams with Brasilian metal bands 'til I started writing new metal tunes and formed MYSTIC". That's how a new chapter in Frank's Metal career began.