THE DEVEREAUX: KILL IT (REVIEW)
January 10th 2007 05:20
THE DEVEREAUX
KILL IT
(2005; SOUNDMALFUNCTION)
RATING:
TRACK LISTING: 1) Raw Deal / 2) Maqam / 3) Zombie Spew / 4) Kill It / 5) Tunnel Song / 6) Waste Some Time / 7) Kill It Pt. 2 / 8) Centipede / 9) End Or Start
I was given the Devereaux album Kill It (2005) by a lone wandering stranger: a ragged saint who stalks the cold concrete night, spreading the word of Brisbane’s independent rock to those who will listen. His name is Joshua, but not the guy who accompanied Moses half way up the mountain. This Joshua did accompany me ALL the way to the bus stop though. What a swell guy!
I got home after this enlightening encounter, put the album on, and was blessed with a revelation. ‘Finally, the indie kids are listening to black metal,’ I thought, and was pleased. Ok, maybe not, but I was certainly surprised when I popped this disk in and heard the guttural, raspy vocals spewing out of vocalist and guitarist Steven Smith’s mouth. He starts out sounding a bit like Michael Gira from the Swans—a deadened, depressing monotone that suits the band's zombie schtick to a teabag—but then the guy starts vomiting forth stuff like ‘ALL I SEE IS NOTHING / ALL I SEE IS A JOKE / ALL I SEE IS A RAW DEAL / ALL I SEE IS NO HOPE’ in a shriek that could almost come from the Arctic wilderness, or Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. It’s almost like Burzum’s Varg Vikernes escaped from prison, sailed from Norway to Brisbane in his longboat, ate some meatballs, stabbed Steven Smith to death, and rerecorded his vocals over the band’s musical tracks—but not quite.
It’s not that the music has much in common with black metal. The Devereaux’s sound touches on a lot of the usual indie suspects: Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Unwound, and the Swans. But none of these bands ever sounded so sneering and demonic, and the Devereaux achieve their own uniquely haunting, mesmerising sound here with Smith’s post-punk guitar, Damien Gray’s churning bass, and Georgina Staines’ stiff but powerful drum work. That’s what makes the Devereaux so exciting to me: they’ve carved their own niche by combining two seemingly incongruous musical forms but created something quite original in the process. I actually seriously doubt these guys like rockin’ out to Burzum or Mayhem, but thanks to the vocals, they’ve captured some of the hatred and malicious intent of those Euro-fag metal bands without the chest-thumping macho bullshit.
The aforementioned “Raw Deal” is one of my favourites, conjuring the anger-pain-depression-rock of the Swans with the added bonus of the demon voice and an insistent, hypnotic sound all its own. “Maqam” is also a great tune: crushing, minimal, and jagged with a rhythmic call-and-response vocal attack that mixes Smith’s hateful screeching with deathly zombie moans. Speakin’ of zombies, “Zombie Spew” is another highlight, where Smith tells us how he used to hate avocadoes because they reminded him of the spew the zombies eat in the Peter Jackson movie Bad Taste, only to share with us that avocadoes are now his favourite green vegetable. He doesn’t offer any reason for the change in palate, but he doesn’t have to. The venom with which Bad Taste is name-dropped gives it a power that drives the point across even before I realised he was talking about the movie. And this is just a joke song, an almost-parody of the Swans albeit with its own distinctly watery sound, that gains meaning because it’s delivered with all the grave seriousness that Gira’s band use to sing about pain, sex, god, and death. That’s not to say that the band aren’t serious, or that they’re music is some sort of oh-so-clever in-joke. It’s just that they apply the same conviction to songs about the bitterness and emptiness of life as they do to songs about schlock movies and avocadoes.
The album does start to sound very Sonic Youth by the middle, but at least they’re diggin’ on that band's earlier, spookier material to augment their horror themes: using dissonant guitars, tribal drums, and swampy bass ala Bad Moon Rising (1985) to create songs that churn and whir, pulling you into their pit of drama ‘n’ despair. The Sonic Youth worship is broken up by the staccato verses and poppy chorus of the title track (which has a rhythmic approach similar to Unwound); the gorgeous and haunting mood of “Centipede” (with its creepy xylophone by Staines which sounds like something from an Argento film); and the hazy beauty of “End Or Start” (which builds from dreamy shoegazer to epic post rock). The black metal vox are gone by the time the band get to the noise instrumental “Kill It Pt. 2”, Smith opting for a softer, more laconic delivery to go with this later material, which is less agitated and angular; more druggy and hazy.
This is the first album I've heard from this mysterious Brisbane band who apparently only play house shows now. I checked out the band’s earlier stuff on MP3.com.au, and Kill It seems like quite a shift in direction from their first album Dawn Of The Devereaux (2003), which had much more of a shoegazin' indie vibe. The band seemed to have gotten nastier with 2005’s Slacker Smack EP, but even then the vocals weren’t as convincingly blood-curdling and spite-filled as they are here. They pepper these tracks with a sickening sense of menace that puts them in a different league to most indie bands, and it seems like the Devereaux are one of a few local acts who are willing to put a bit of danger back in the indie scene. This is inDIE that deserves to have the word DIE in it. Or as the Devereaux themselves so eloquently put it:
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT.
***
IMAGES
Kill It*
(album cover used under fair dealing)
* images on this page were taken from the following MP3.com.au page:
Kill It
KILL IT
(2005; SOUNDMALFUNCTION)
RATING:
TRACK LISTING: 1) Raw Deal / 2) Maqam / 3) Zombie Spew / 4) Kill It / 5) Tunnel Song / 6) Waste Some Time / 7) Kill It Pt. 2 / 8) Centipede / 9) End Or Start
Kill It (2005)
I got home after this enlightening encounter, put the album on, and was blessed with a revelation. ‘Finally, the indie kids are listening to black metal,’ I thought, and was pleased. Ok, maybe not, but I was certainly surprised when I popped this disk in and heard the guttural, raspy vocals spewing out of vocalist and guitarist Steven Smith’s mouth. He starts out sounding a bit like Michael Gira from the Swans—a deadened, depressing monotone that suits the band's zombie schtick to a teabag—but then the guy starts vomiting forth stuff like ‘ALL I SEE IS NOTHING / ALL I SEE IS A JOKE / ALL I SEE IS A RAW DEAL / ALL I SEE IS NO HOPE’ in a shriek that could almost come from the Arctic wilderness, or Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. It’s almost like Burzum’s Varg Vikernes escaped from prison, sailed from Norway to Brisbane in his longboat, ate some meatballs, stabbed Steven Smith to death, and rerecorded his vocals over the band’s musical tracks—but not quite.
It’s not that the music has much in common with black metal. The Devereaux’s sound touches on a lot of the usual indie suspects: Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Unwound, and the Swans. But none of these bands ever sounded so sneering and demonic, and the Devereaux achieve their own uniquely haunting, mesmerising sound here with Smith’s post-punk guitar, Damien Gray’s churning bass, and Georgina Staines’ stiff but powerful drum work. That’s what makes the Devereaux so exciting to me: they’ve carved their own niche by combining two seemingly incongruous musical forms but created something quite original in the process. I actually seriously doubt these guys like rockin’ out to Burzum or Mayhem, but thanks to the vocals, they’ve captured some of the hatred and malicious intent of those Euro-fag metal bands without the chest-thumping macho bullshit.
The aforementioned “Raw Deal” is one of my favourites, conjuring the anger-pain-depression-rock of the Swans with the added bonus of the demon voice and an insistent, hypnotic sound all its own. “Maqam” is also a great tune: crushing, minimal, and jagged with a rhythmic call-and-response vocal attack that mixes Smith’s hateful screeching with deathly zombie moans. Speakin’ of zombies, “Zombie Spew” is another highlight, where Smith tells us how he used to hate avocadoes because they reminded him of the spew the zombies eat in the Peter Jackson movie Bad Taste, only to share with us that avocadoes are now his favourite green vegetable. He doesn’t offer any reason for the change in palate, but he doesn’t have to. The venom with which Bad Taste is name-dropped gives it a power that drives the point across even before I realised he was talking about the movie. And this is just a joke song, an almost-parody of the Swans albeit with its own distinctly watery sound, that gains meaning because it’s delivered with all the grave seriousness that Gira’s band use to sing about pain, sex, god, and death. That’s not to say that the band aren’t serious, or that they’re music is some sort of oh-so-clever in-joke. It’s just that they apply the same conviction to songs about the bitterness and emptiness of life as they do to songs about schlock movies and avocadoes.
The album does start to sound very Sonic Youth by the middle, but at least they’re diggin’ on that band's earlier, spookier material to augment their horror themes: using dissonant guitars, tribal drums, and swampy bass ala Bad Moon Rising (1985) to create songs that churn and whir, pulling you into their pit of drama ‘n’ despair. The Sonic Youth worship is broken up by the staccato verses and poppy chorus of the title track (which has a rhythmic approach similar to Unwound); the gorgeous and haunting mood of “Centipede” (with its creepy xylophone by Staines which sounds like something from an Argento film); and the hazy beauty of “End Or Start” (which builds from dreamy shoegazer to epic post rock). The black metal vox are gone by the time the band get to the noise instrumental “Kill It Pt. 2”, Smith opting for a softer, more laconic delivery to go with this later material, which is less agitated and angular; more druggy and hazy.
This is the first album I've heard from this mysterious Brisbane band who apparently only play house shows now. I checked out the band’s earlier stuff on MP3.com.au, and Kill It seems like quite a shift in direction from their first album Dawn Of The Devereaux (2003), which had much more of a shoegazin' indie vibe. The band seemed to have gotten nastier with 2005’s Slacker Smack EP, but even then the vocals weren’t as convincingly blood-curdling and spite-filled as they are here. They pepper these tracks with a sickening sense of menace that puts them in a different league to most indie bands, and it seems like the Devereaux are one of a few local acts who are willing to put a bit of danger back in the indie scene. This is inDIE that deserves to have the word DIE in it. Or as the Devereaux themselves so eloquently put it:
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT
KILL IT.
***
IMAGES
Kill It*
(album cover used under fair dealing)
* images on this page were taken from the following MP3.com.au page:
Kill It
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Comment by tinkster
I have never heard of them. I think they might be too hard for me. What do you think? Be honest with the Tinkster now.
Comment by Hellvis
Earache Hotel
They're probably not your cup of tea. They're not so much hard as noisy and unsettling.
Ttheir first album is a lot softer and prettier than Kill It though. There's a link to the MP3s in my review. Maybe you should check it out (you never know).