The whole "Hallucinations" LP deals with the story of a young girl and her life from 4 years to death by an overdose of heroin. It's a concept album and I think we did a good job to combine the music with the sense of the lyrics.
Mathias Röderer / Atrocity interview, Blasphemous #1, 1991
ATROCITY released their debut album, Hallucinations, on this day in 1990 through Nuclear Blast.
It is a story about a girl which have been sexually abused at the age of 4 from her own father. She has a big problem with that subject when she is growing up. She has no real friends cause everyone thinks she is mad, but she is afraid of telling anyone about her problem. One day she finds "friends" who lead her into drugs and alcohol....In the beginning she feels free cause she is accepted by everyone now and she is happy and love her life again. But after a while these so called friends of her turn their back on her and she gets into really heavy drugs, like heroin. With another drug addicted she tries to get clean again, but they don't make it... Both are dying of overdose!
...I was totally impressed by the book/movie CHRISTIANE F. There are definitely alot of influence in my story from that, but there are also alot of other things in it which you can read in the newspapers everyday. It is so terryfying that for example 60 people more per month over the last year have died on drugs. People should think about that when using drugs. In fact I'm a total absteener and vegetarian I thought it was a good idea to tell the kids that you can have alot of fun without using drugs as alcohol. That is my view on Death Metal.
Alex Krull / Atrocity interview, Slayer #8, 1991
Recording and mixing took place at Morrisound Recordings June and July 1990.
First the idea was to record the album in Berlin but the studio was occupied by another band at the time we wanted to record our album. The other thing was that we listened to several albums and the best sound for our music came from the MORRISOUND studio!! Of course there are some good studio's in Germany, but nobody knows about the sound we want. So Scott Burns and Tom Morris were the right, they are very professional and really into the music. It also was a big dream for the whole band to go to Florida and going the album there, it ruled!!!!!!
Mathias Röderer / Atrocity interview, Slayer #8, 1991
We recorded the album in Morrisound Studios, in Tampa, Florida. The producer was Scott Burns but also Tom Morris worked on it. The recording was a brilliant time, but also stressy! At the end we are really satisfied with "Hallucinations". It is the product we wanted to make before. Thousands of breaks, tempo changes and... a pretty good sound! Of course you can do everything different and better and hopefully we will do, we want to go on a to progress!
Alex Krull / Atrocity interview, Holocaust #5, 1991
The cover artwork is Homage to Beckett I, work 93 (1968) by HR Giger.
...we are very happy that he has given one of his paintings for our album covers, cause I'm a big fan of his pictures. And for us there was only DALY or GIGER to choose from a luckily we got one of them. The drawing represents album title "Hallucinations" perfect in my opinion.
Alex Krull / Atrocity interview, Slayer #8, 1991
We make original Death Metal I think. We make different Death Metal, right? So I write original and different lyrics! Also I think my lyrics are thought out and I have something to say, something that people can think about!
...the story was created by me, and I never tried any kind of drugs in all my life, and I never will! I am totally against drugs and I am anti alcoholic! So the story wasn't written because we had any bad experiences with drugs!!! Instead I am not using drugs I have been interested in that problematic! I have been asking myself "why do people destroy themselves ?!". So I thought about doing an anti drug song, but I realized that the whole problematic is too big for just only one song. So I told the others about the idea of making a concept album. They agreed and we did it! The story is about a drug addicted girl who died from an overdose of heroin. The story shows the reasons, the background, and the mistakes in society!
Alex Krull / Atrocity interview, Holocaust #5, 1991