I’m a believer, boys & girls!
Okay, yeah, I know, this is not the sort of band that I would normally start to get excited about, but Kill Hannah have always been something a little bit special. Coming from Chicago, they are a nice mix of Glam and Electronica, with a sprinkling of Emo, and having stumbled on them sometime last year it is good to see that they are finally releasing their second album ‘Until There Is Nothing Left Of Us’ in the UK on Roadrunner Records.
What we get with this release are 15 songs which include an intro song, an outro song and two bonus tracks. In between these we have the excellent single, ‘Lips Like Morphine’ that is a Glam monster, with chugging Punk guitar riffs, but Glam vocals that are a little bit Placebo and a lot like Rachel Stamp. “I want a girl with lips like morphine // knock me out every time they touch me // I wanna feel a kiss just crush me // and break me down, knock me out!” sings Mat Divine. Before that there is the nice rocking tune, ‘Believer’ that’s only downside is the keyboards that sound like the siren from the music to hospital drama show, ‘Casualty’, but it’s another well thought out track with nice melodies, and as the song is about ‘sirens and flashing lights’ for that they can be forgiven!
‘Boys & Girls’ is a fine example of Kill Hannah and how they don’t sound like anyone else around at the moment. This is a good example of how you can take the basis of a great catchy Pop/Punk song, but tone the guitars into the background, and bring in the keyboards with Glam vocals, giving a song every bit as good as, ‘Lips Like Morphine’. Along these same lines we have ‘Love You To Death’ which is a bit like a cross between classic Simple Plan and Good Charlotte if they were told to write a Glam track. Then going slightly more Space-Glam in the vein of Babylon Zoo, we get, ‘Crazy Angel’ as a slower song that threatens to be a ballad without ever being as such. Starting with a female asking, “So what is the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” we then have a slightly slushy song about being infatuated with this Crazy Angel…
We have almost a nod towards Linkin Park in ‘The Songs That Saved My Life’, whereby there may be no rap but if the verse is slightly similar to one of their mid-tempo songs, then the shouting chorus could definitely be sung by Chester. Then we have more of the American’s obsession with doomed family the Kennedy’s in the aptly titled song, ‘Kennedy’, whereby we hear why Mat wants to be one, in a slightly Manson-esque Electro-way. Personally I don’t get it, but hey, I grew up in a small country hamlet in Wiltshire, so what do I know?
If I have to be critical then I would suggest that apart from the great drum beat and screaming guitar feedback of the song that builds up nicely of, ‘They Can’t Save Us Now’, the other songs fall just short, and perhaps these just need more plays, but this is only two songs, ‘The Collapse’ and ‘Black Poison Blood’, before the two slightly below par bonus tracks of, ‘The Chase’ and ‘Nerve Gas’, whereby the former does have a great backbone of a thick rhythm section, and the latter has some twisted morbid lyrics!
Kill Hannah’s music has been described as many things from ‘Darkwave’, ‘New Romantic’ and ‘Goth’, however it could easily be ‘Glam-Goth’, ‘Dark Electro-Pop/Punk’ or, of course, ‘Dark Wave Disco’. Whatever you want to label them, Kill Hannah have a sound that you know is different from anything else out there, and even though I bound around the genre Glam, there is nothing dated about the sound that this genre-label might suggest. If you took Eliott Minor and got them to play Placebo and AFI for 24 hrs straight, then this is probably a sound that they may favour by the end. Currently touring with Aiden, I can only see big things for Kill Hannah. This is good stuff, folks!