As much as it pains me to say it, industrial is a genre built on experimentation that has been falling short of that goal for many years now. But the modern industrial landscape still observes rays of hope in the form of bands like Street Sects, Hide and Dead Times. Bands that embody that original spirit of individualistic expression, with any tools they see fit. Rather than opting to sound like another clone of KMFDM or Ministry, Death Killer are set to jump on this train and mostly manage with interesting results. The severely titled Total Destruction of the Entire Universe approaches the genre with a metal mindset somewhat divorced from the industrial metal scene, meaning they do not sound like an industrial band wanting to do monotone metal, rather a metal band wanting to do weird industrial. The distorted guitars, samples or not, contain a lot of rocking groove that could be at home in a KMFDM album but are at the same time meaner. In other instances, the guitars take on the same menacing feel as Millenium-era Front Line Assembly. The ways the guitar performs on this debut displays an intelligence I rarely see in industrial metal bands. You’ll find a cheeky harmonized dual guitar moment a lá Iron Maiden in “You Know Nothing About Metal”, some black metal riffing in “Nobody Survives” and otherwise so much distortion as to crush the guitar sound into deliberate noise. Other notable moments include the fun “Retro = Shit” which sounds like Psalm 69-era Ministry mixed with trap.
Lastly, the noisier and drone-like aspects of Total Destruction of the Entire Universe remind of how Akira Yamaoka handles his horror atmospherics in works like the soundtrack to the first two Silent Hill games. The drones, in effect, sound like sentient boiler room machinery with a malicious intent. It’s a seriously odd combination of elements that sounds like a style that is new and raw, sure to develop into something more lethal. Some of the more loose tracks can lose the plot and make me zone out a bit; I noticed this particularly in the middle of the album, where I had to focus a lot to understand what the songs “Dentist” and “The Witch” are doing. But I have found that the more I listen to the album the more I enjoy it, a big part of its success lying in its variety and willingness to play with tropes of more than one genre. The ordered chaos of the more atmospheric industrial in Death Killer has yet to reach that mesmerising drug haze that Skinny Puppy were so good at creating, but I have no doubt that this artist can reach that level of quality if they keep on experimenting like they do here.
