A rash of west coast bands is keeping the acrid black flames of aggro-industrial burning. What the hell has happened in California that's prompting so many seething angry industrial bands to erupt from the woodwork in the last decade or so? Is it the pollution? The crime? The drugs? The creeping expansion of Silicon Valley techno-feudalism into everyone's lives? Whatever it is, "notorious Bay Area industrial duo" Killer Couture are the latest act from the region to make a motherfucker want to crush a Cyber Truck under the treads of a Soviet T55 battle tank.
n0teeth has long argued that the wave of industrial we still happily find ourselves surfing began in LA with the aptly named Youth Code - a rejuvenating (pun intended) blast of raw energy that stripped the residual stains of aggrotech, witch house and painfully unfunny self-referential meme-dustrial off the toilet bowl of 21st century industrial culture like a refreshing dose of bleach.
That vibrant and violent momentum couldn't be carried entirely on Youth Code's heavily inked shoulders, however, and when the dust settled we looked around to find an increasingly redundant number of 80s throwback synth bands coming down the LA-goth-club-to-Euro-darkwave-festival pipeline. Fortunately, reinforcements soon arrived with Inva//id, recent upstarts Purest Form, both from the LA/SF area (pardon our rough geographical knowledge), and, as we've recently discovered, Killer Couture.
Killer Couture are one of those bands who shouldn't work on paper, but explode on contact with your ears. On their more guitar-based material, for instance, KC repeatedly drop little djent-isms that should annoy me, but don't, thanks to the generous application of horrible, gravelly distortion. There's nothing more disappointing than a purportedly "industrial" rock band with a clean, polished guitar sound: it's the musical equivalent of mild cheddar. Fortunately, Killer Couture bring the extra mature Cornish cruncher with gleefully spiteful relish.
Lads, we're doing industrial surf rock now, ok?
Their earlier work is light on the guitar, heavy on the drum programming and bass: synth punk with a mean, angsty (North American) coldwave attitude and vicious Numb-style snarling to match. The 2018 EP God Forgive The Children was a little rough around the edges but already showing promise.
"Meltdown" from that release sounded so much like Babyland I had to double check it wasn't a cover. Come to think of it, maybe that's what's in the water down California way: the lingering echoes of San Francisco's premier electronic junk punk act, still penetrating the blood-brain barrier of aspiring young noise makers like heavy metals from the air they breathe. The Babes' militant positivity is all but absent in KC's realm however: the vibe is pleasingly nihilistic. (We can let them off for the "Kids In America" cover, which neither adds to nor subtracts from Kim Wilde's original. A bit like Apop's "Cambodia" in that regard.)
"I Live" is a belting opener to What's Left, the sophomore effort that takes Forgive the Children's scrappy synth punk and tightens up the dynamics and production to create a sharper, more effective electro-industrial attack, complete with increased metal-on-metal percussive shrapnel. There's that Babyland magic again: would that there were more industrial artists under Dan & Smith's influence and fewer under Mortal Kombat's, but alas!
Killer Couture provide a feast for nerdy sample-spotters as well. I'm hearing some Ministryesque drums (possibly from Stigmata?) on the furiously rattling "Unsolvable Equation", Nigel Green's "...god" as made famous by the Thrill Kill Kult on the monstruous lockstep machine funk groove that is "God Forgive The Children (Reprise)" and, the easily identifiable Blood Upon The Risers snippet aside, the marching sounds that open Links 234 at the end of "The Needle" (unless my ears deceive me).
All the mechanistic guitar crunch in the world means diddly squat if you don't have the percussive artillery to back it up, but fortunately Killer Couture bring the munitions in spades, their firepower ably demonstrated by these above-mentioned cuts and more. It's fascinating to hear Killer Couture's evolution across three releases like this, and it's certainly got us hyped for where they'll direct their sonic battery next.
Industrial shit's happening in here
Amongst all the top quality gear emerging from California, however, the elephant in the room we must address is an LA band who I won't name, in the interest of not stirring the pot. A band I may or may not have unsubtly referenced in the name of this blog. A band who cheerfully commit every cardinal sin an industrial rock band can commit:
- style 100x over substance ✓
- hackneyed Adbusters/Banksy style agitprop 2 make u think ✓
- clunky, unvarying rhythms ✓
- uninspired cock rock guitar stodge ✓
- covering a Tears For Fears song ✓, inviting speculation that the cunts were now entering their fucking Disturbed era, only to then cover Spin Me Right Round, confirming that no, the fucking cunts are to all intents and purposes still fucking cunting shitting cunted bastard dogshit cuntforsaken fucking Dope
(The band in question isn't actually Dope, before you ask, but fuck Dope too. An embarrassment to all multicellular life on Earth.)
But never mind these shit-heels and bell-shiners. The quaint old town of fair Los Angeles has made great strides in atoning for its past sins with a healthy output of exciting new talent spanning EBM, industrial, industrial rock and the various grimy electronic nooks in between. Even as I write this a new Youth Code track is rattling my cans. While the planet burns and the arse falls out the bottom of liberal democracy, the Californian industrial scene is in better shape than ever.