Kill The Thrill – Autophagie
Kill The Thrill – Autophagie
Season Of Mist
Release Date: 26.01.24
Running Time: 59:56
Review by Dark Juan
Infinity squared/10
Dark Juan is your friend. Dark Juan accepts many people into his bosom because there is always a need for people to find new friends. New friends are what broaden the horizons, and challenge prejudices and make a person whole, renewing their points of views and re-polishing their humanity and their personality.
Fuck it. Who am I trying to fool here? Myself or you readers? Dark Juan is a misanthropic, eldritch horror who lusts after unattainable women and crouches in shadows, face contorted in hatred and rage at the beautiful people in the light of friendship and joy and happiness. The performers who give so freely of themselves, when Dark Juan had to get hideously drunk and hide behind a mask just to be able to perform in front of people. The outgoing, friendly souls who can talk to anyone and go home with them and can seduce and charm and beguile and have people bask in the reflected gleam of their bonhomie and gift of the gab. Dark Juan (and many other people, who are my true friends even if they don’t realise it yet) has none of these things. This is due to a nihilistic outlook on everything, severe social anxiety leading to a total lack of small talk unless it is about VERY specific subjects because of undiagnosed but painfully obvious neurodiversity, and a chronic lack of self-confidence and a face like a sack of spanners.
It is at times like this, when you think back on your life, you suddenly discover that there were bands that had a truly formative influence on your life. The broken hearted, half-insane crooning of The Sisters Of Mercy was one, as was the visceral Thrash of Slayer and there were also the incomparable sounds of Kill The Thrill – the first band that Dark Juan ever heard that transcended everything he had ever listened to before. This French trio are among the most seminal creators of avant-garde music that Dark Juan has ever heard or experienced. Their utterly unique sound encompassing everything from the most alienated Drone, the most heartbroken of Gothic Rock, the sheer eclecticism of Alt Rock, the rage and machinelike fury of Industrial music and the Punk aesthetic and melody of New Wave. Kill The Thrill were one of the few bands that carried Dark Juan through the torture of his teenage years and into adulthood where you can at least drink and fuck to numb the pain.
And now, after nineteen long years, Kill The Thrill are back. Dark Juan and the Platter Of Splatter ™ have been building up the anticipation to a tight, tinny pitch and now we can wait no longer – let us explore a band that were (it is not superlative to say) once sublime geniuses.
I’m going in…
‘Tout va bien se terminer’ starts with a droning dissonance behind the cracked, tortured voice of Nicolas Dick in a very strange, psychologically disturbing, otherworldly version of Café Chanson until the drums slowly build and the equally ethereal, operatic backing vocals of Marylin Tognolli enter the cognition of the unwitting listener, and the whole piece builds in a kind of Swans-like, slow grind avalanche of sound where Dick stretches that unique voice from cracked heartbreak to gravelly, nerve-rending emotion. Every single sinew, every muscle of your aching heart is stretched to the very point of snapping…
And then it just ends. It stops and leaves you tottering on a precipice of emotional overload, mid-breath and windmilling your arms for balance. Holy fuck, if the first song on this album is that good, then Dark Juan is not going to survive this record. He will die of dehydration from constant sex wee draining.
It’s not going to end well, this… the dark side of Pop that is ‘À la dérive’ references all that is good in Goth music. Heartfelt crooning, overwhelming emotions, music that is not so much played as gushes from the performers in an endless, all-encompassing tumult of tears and blood and Dark Juan is going to end up as a desiccated husk on the floor unless Kill The Thrill stop creating music that hits Dark Juan right in the endorphin producers and doesn’t stop squeezing them dry.
‘Le dernier train’ references everything from Xmal Deutschland to Joy Division to Einstürzende Neubauten to Kraftwerk with its insistent, simple yet driving drum pattern and coruscating waves of sound. The bass playing of Tognolli really shines on this song as it goes from gentle and caressing lover to dangerous, dissonant monster several times in the same song, and the distinctive, rough-edged voice of Nicolas is allowed to stretch beyond pseudo-sexual growling into something wholly and worryingly expansive.
‘Capitan’ is something else again, a horizon-to-horizon vista of endless sound that is always doing something vibrant and exciting, yet with shadowy, unplumbed depths below it that hints at an underbelly so seedy and sick that very few people would ever care to experience it. Of course, this is where you will find your humble correspondent holding court over his coterie of the wall-eyed, vain, and insane. It even contains a reference to ‘Pure’ by The Lightning Seeds with the repetitive horn motif within.
I cannot cope with this album. I really can’t. Sublime should be the place of gods and titans. “Autophagie” is gorgeously, overwhelmingly powerful. It is a long flow of orgasmic lava, a wave of shimmering noises that carries away everything in its path. I am immersed in a shimmering, black sea of sound that is as obsidian as it is vibrantly alive. A cascade of pleasure and pain that is eternal. It is the most beautiful torture I have ever experienced. A tour-de-force of overdriven flesh and red-raw nerves. I am utterly spent.
Jesus fucking Christ in a chariot-driven sidecar.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d’évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan, pour mes amis francophones du monde entier. J’adore la scène musicale extrême française. J’ai vécu en France pendant deux ans et demi et j’adore tout de votre pays et de votre culture. À part cette putain de bureaucratie. J’espère y vivre à nouveau un jour) is utterly fucked beyond repair once again. I don’t think it has ever registered a score so high. Infinity squared/10 for Kill The Thrill, who have reminded Dark Juan about just how avant-garde, how unique, how utterly fucking IRREPLACEABLE they are.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Tout va bien se terminer (Everything Will End Well)
02. À la derive (Adrift)
03. Le dernier train (The Last Train)
04. Autophagie (Autophagy)
05. Capitan (Captain)
06. Clusterheadache
07. Les enfants brûlent (The Children Are Burning)
08. Je suis là (I am Here)
09. Ahan
LINE-UP:
Nicolas Dick – Lead vocals, guitar, lap steel, sample
Marylin Tognolli – Bass guitar
François Rossi – Drums
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of said party. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
