Kill “Inverted Funeral” CD

"Inverted Funeral" is the sophomore full-length from Sweden's almost too perfectly named Kill, and was released almost a year ago by the almighty Total Holocaust Records, but I've been a little behind, what can I say? Despite having been active for over a decade now, I had never heard Kill before, but this album tears through eight tracks of totally raw, furious black metal in about 43 minutes—complete with an efficiently thin, dry recording that bears a shitload of fiery, overdriven bite to the guitar tone; while subtly plunky basslines help to fill in the gaps at the core of the mix. The vocals are slightly up front, while the drums tend to fall to the distance, but overall I actually like the aesthetic of the recording, and find it to be relatively balanced out when all is said and done. They're clearly shooting for a grating, over the top sound, and they certainly achieve it, but they do so without going too far, you know? It fits, considering the band's equally raw riffing style, which builds around straightforward blasts and tremolo picking, solid midpaced runs, and the occasional presence of some crude old school "heavy metal" riffs and power chord breakdowns. For the most part they forgo the colder, more dissonant style and aim for a bashing, churning, go-for-the-throat attack—which does retain some air of dissonance, but mainly due to the raggedness of the guitar tone during some of the faster and more chaotic note-based tremolo picking (though certain tracks, like "Below", do bust out some killer little arpeggiated riffs and shit like that as well). Is it creative? Is it diverse? Well, not really... but who gives a fuck!? Sometimes simple and to-the-point is all you need, and this album does a great job of that as far as I'm concerned. Good stuff.

Kill "Deathmessiah"

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Total Holocaust Records
Hells Headbangers
Regimental Records