The Kill – Kill Them…All
Typically, especially over the past five years, any time we’ve received a promo from a band that labels itself “grindcore”, it’s practically already set to become kindling, a Goodwill donation that sits there for years, or something just to destroy and take one’s anger out on in a time of need. Seriously, rule of thumb, if you can barely read the logo and its grindcore, it’s probably going to be very, very bad. We’d throw in another ‘very’ but it doesn’t even deserve that, most of the time. Purulent Jacuzzi should prove that very succinctly with this newest one. So what’s the norm? Simple, lots of tracks that run barely under a minute, messy gore art, samples as the only way to differentiate that you’re listening to a new song, and all the music muddling together in such a way that it sounds like of like this: zhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh titititi zhhhhhhhhhhh. Completely accurate depiction, in fact we just copyright that so don’t even touch it. So, then we got this submission here from The Kill. At first we said to ourselves uggghhhhh gawd no no no not another one of these. And then we looked, and we pondered, and as we pondered the gates of a new and glorious future opened before us where grindcore can, yes, actually be good.
There was something about this one, that cover. The logo, legible, and to the point. Typical grindcore mistake? Find a big word in a medical text you don’t bother to check in and dictionary, and then move to a thesaurus starting from something like “brutal” and going through there until you reach a term you’ve never heard of but seems to be graphic or something. Let’s see here…’acrimonious’, yep that sounds pretty graphic there, let’s go for it. Australia’s The Kill, no interest in that, they’re straight and to the point. But this is the royal form of ‘kill’, kill par excellence, the definition of the term, if you will. It’s actually surprising this name wasn’t already chosen, but see, that’s the mistake of grinders, they hit the medical textbook before the thesaurus, and it just turns out bad in the end. Now, the art is pretty typical, messy, graphic, though it was created from the guy at Braindead Zine, but that name, it told us something, it told us these guys are probably not the norm…
And we were right. Kill Them…All is about grind qua grind. No more of this stupid logo crap, no more of these big words that aren’t even understood or, worse yet, improperly utilized. No more porn samples from the same entry level porn everyone uses. The Kill deal out harsh, nasty, fast, and powerful grind, and that’s what it’s about. Surprisingly, you can actually hear the differences in riffs because hey, these guys can write riffs. A few samples, sure, we don’t mind, but even if they weren’t there the variation is evident. The Kill is focused, just like their unpretentious name. They’re direct, artful, and they have no time for superfluity in grind. They are what grind should be forever more. What’s better is there really isn’t a single ‘stand out’ track, meaning it all flows together into total annihilation, and you can tell these guys rip flesh live, even in a community hall, but with a sense of self-deprecation. 19 tracks running around a minute each? This is the first time that approach won’t annoy you. Splendid, splendid noise that makes you want to enjoy vomiting all over again, like the good old days tape swapping before it was cool.
Written by Stanley Stepanic
The Kill – Kill Them…All
Blastafuk
4.5 / 5
