KILL THE THRILL are France’s most enigmatic metal band. Despite a few lineup changes over the years, long-standing members Marylin Tognolli & Nicolas Dick have been penning poignant post-punk lyrics over bleak industrialized new wave landscapes ever since the band’s genesis in 1989.
Now, Kill the Thrill are back with their fifth album. Autophagie is abrasive and hypnotic. The title track swarms with feedback-laden guitars, tingling piano and Dick’s haunted, roughshod vocals.
Watch the video for “Autophagie”, which splices together scraps of near-apocalyptic images into a surreal fever dream that would give David Lynch nightmares.
‘Autophagie’ comes out January 26, 2024 on Season of Mist.
Pre-order: https://shop.season-of-mist.com/list/kill-the-thrill-autophagie
Pre-save: https://orcd.co/kttautophagiepresave
“We had this thread of autophagy running through the album”, says Kill The Thrill, “the principle of which is to enable adaptation and survival, because this cannibalistic process is triggered in conditions of stress or impoverishment. It’s at the point of metamorphosis, of regeneration, and it’s an unavoidable evil if there’s to be a revival. The images in the clip resonate with autophagy through the prism of a violent distortion of the things transmitted, but also of our own strangeness, and of us humans, who contemplate them fascinated, imagining ourselves to be in control of everything, until we forget where we came from.
The clip is conceived as a ghostly journey, a tale in 2 parts, a visual trance that plunges us into the heart of darkness with a strong sense of hyper-acceleration in time. The flashes of white and areas of grey provide clues, and conjure up powerful images of life on earth. A civilization that has taken care of its space by forging artisanal tools, but whose desire to delimit and control everything, and its need to consume more and more, has transformed this artisanal knowledge into an instrument of mass degradation.”
Tracklist
1. Tout va bien se terminer (8:53)2. À la dérive (5:36)
3. Le dernier train (10:30)
4. Autophagie (4:21) [WATCH HERE]
5. Capitan (9:21)
6. Cluster headache (5:38)
7. Les enfants brûlent (4:10)
8. Je suis là (5:40)
9. Ahan (5:47)
Total: 59:56
Line-up
Nicolas Dick – Lead vocals, guitar, lap steel, sample
Marylin Tognolli – Bass Guitar
François Rossi – Drums
Recording Studio
Le Puits Sonore
Sound, Mixing & Mastering Engineer
Nicolas Dick
KILL THE THRILL was formed in 1989 and is composed of Nicolas Dick on vocals, guitar and lap-steel, Marylin Tognolli on bass for its founding members. Stemming from the French noisy wave of the early 90’s, their music is often described as dark, abrasive and hypnotic, full of epic moments, with a dense and rich sound mixing elements of industrial rock, post-punk, dark new wave and experimental metal.
Forging an atmosphere as dreamy as chaotic, with multiple layers and atmospheres, sometimes ambient, sometimes more hostile. Kill The Thrill interlaces orchestrated soundscapes, enriched with innumerable layers and arrangements, playing amongst the rifts to create a unique and personal work, so far from everything and so close to everyone.
The group released its first album in 1993 entitled Dig, followed by an EP Pit (on the labels Noise Product CH and Semetary), and at that time had three musicians, already working with samples and playing with blocks of sound.
In 1996, the trio became a duo with a second album entitled Low (Noise Product CH), recorded, mixed and produced by Nicolas Dick. The artist ErikM intervened on the interludes with sound tracks which frame each title of the group. The album is hailed by the press as a perfect balance between melody and distortion.
Over the years, tracks have appeared on a large number of compilations: “La Famille” (Noise Product Belgium), “Serial Killer Vol 1” (Roadrunner), “Brutale Generation” (Semetary / WMD), “Ah Quelle Belle journée” (Amanita records), “A Wild State Of Noise And Disorder “(Pandemonium), “5 Years Of Fury” (Noise Product CH), “Tribute To Godflesh” (Nihilistic H. Rec.), “Fear Drop 14” : “Coal Fire” on The Cure Masterpiece Pornography, “Dark 80’s” (Atropine Records) etc.
Frederic De Benedetti joined the band on guitar and it’s again as a trio that the album 203 Barriers was released by Season Of Mist in 2001, the album again entirely recorded and produced by Nicolas Dick. With this new opus Kill The Thrill’s music has evolved towards a daring, disturbing and more extreme sound. With international promotion and distribution, signing with the label Season Of Mist allowed an opportunity of further development for the band.
Kill The Thrill has shared stages all over Europe with other artists such as Godflesh, Killing Joke, Zeni Geva, Isis, Young Gods, Treponem Pal, Einstürzende Neubauten, La Muerte, Neurosis, Jesu, Jim Rose Circus, Grötus, Dillinger, Escape Plan, Dälek, etc.
The album Tellurique released in 2005 (Season Of Mist, recorded and produced by Nicolas) combines a cold and clinical industrial/metal sound with a new wave sensibility, bathed in a heavily melancholic atmosphere, but leaning more in the direction of noisy, distorted shoegazing mists than the fires of metal. The album is described by the press as an organic journey in which you must immerse yourself to feel its harshness and beauty.
This exacerbated trio asserts itself as a true entity in symbiosis, with an unfiltered and no holds barred take on music and sound.
Anger has no origin, and when the events from which it arises, physical bodies and soundwaves, can no longer contain patience and intelligibility, the sounds become the violence.
But with Kill The Thrill, violence is always suggested more than frontally expressed, it remains hemmed in and contained.
In 2015 the band reissued its first under the title 1989 (Atypeek Records), a digital-only album intended as a nod to Kill The Thrill’s origins.
During a few years of silence put to good use on the personal and musical projects of the members of the group, Kill The Thrill took the time to polish new album Autophagie, which will released at the beginning of 2024.
The band has released a limited number of albums in its career so far, but is resistant to all erosion, the secret of its longevity residing in the timelessness of the music.
An atypical band whose music is enough to itself ; a discrete band for imposing music ; a group which reveals next to nothing but pursues its sonic quest, outside of common standards. A living ambiguity: cold and hot, the calm and the storm.
“A long flow of orgasmic lava, a wave of shimmering noises that carries away everything in its path. One immerses oneself entirely in its bewitching atmospheres. We leave for a long descent on a carpet of guitars, their richness is inside, under this heap of notes and noises, under this black and disturbing mass. It’s up to you to understand what you can during a journey that is sublime”.
To Kill the Thrill reaches for the ineffable.
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/kill-the-thrill/73438869
Bandcamp: https://killthethrill.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/killthethrill/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/killthethrill_band/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KillThe_Thrill
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KillTheThrill-band
