pic by Emilio Paranoico

I first heard Kill Your Boyfriend, courtesy of the Limited Edition 10″ split double A Side, with New Candys back in January.

Their “Illimitate Post Punk | Dark Wave | Black Shoegaze | Irritating Noise”, was an indelibly intoxicating introduction.

Fast forward to Fuzz Club Festival a few weeks back and fellow aesthete, Monica Melissano of A Giant Leap, EU/UK booking agency for Kill Your Boyfriend, hands me a promo copy of the CD for ‘The King Is Dead’.

To my heartfelt shame and embarrassment it has sat, waiting patiently for it’s opportunity to shine. And SHINE it has, it has caressed then blown my ears off, with blissful immoderation.

Having released the  ‘S_T’ album in CD format in 2013, ‘The King Is Dead’ is Kill Your Boyfriend’s first long player to be released on vinyl, through the Shyrec label.

Shyrec are a small Italian independent music label, founded in 2004, talking about their work, they say, “You may not love what we do. But for us it’s all that passes through our ears and now lies in our hearts”. Fine and noble words indeed.

Kill Your Boyfriend are Matteo Scarpa and Antonio Angeli.

Taking it’s visual cue from the sleeve depiction of Ingmar Bergman’s iconic, ‘The Seventh Seal’ Death character, Kill Your Boyfriend are the calm before the storm, epitomised in the line, “And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.”

‘Death List N.1’, is, as the name suggests, a menacing harbinger, an atmospheric, scene setting eulogy; ‘Alan’, corkscrews in frenetic, danse macabre, spiralling abandon; ‘Charles’, jitters with a frantic, anonymous, disembodied dislocation, “somebody calls, somebody shouts, somebody dies”; ‘Frank’, bristles with industrial eclecticism, a brooding, helter skeltering, disjointed furore; ‘Jesse’, shimmers with orchestrated arrhythmic sine waves, operatic pallor rendered in delicious gothic grandeur, a portentous fin de siècle…

‘Death List N.2’, rains ominous shards, in sheet like, glacial subjugation; ‘Lewis’, skips with kaleidoscopic dark weave, only shades of grey inform this immutable palette; ‘Neil’, cascades in clamorous, cathartic cacophony; ‘Martin’, intones sombre reflection, a delightfully delinquent and doleful dirge; ‘Rudolph’, evokes a syncopated stygian stomp, a visceral trance inducing, whirling black euphoria…

Kill Your Boyfriend’s infectious brand of regicide, reigns in supreme pallbearing rude health – ‘The King Is Dead’, Long Live The King…

Available now on the Shyrec Label and via bandcamp, ten new tracks identified as usual by male names and produced in collaboration with Luca Giovanardi, Julie’s Haircut’s guitarist.