Kill The Thrill navigate a towering dreamscape on ‘Capitan’

KILL THE THRILL are blessed with a uniquely elusive vision. The French duo have been dreaming up an abrasive-but-hypnotic blend of industrial rock, post-punk and dark wave. Heck, the title track off their upcoming fifth album, Autophagie, arrived with a surreal fever dream of a video that could give David Lynch nightmares.

Today, Kill the Thrill are releasing yet another cinematic video for their new single.

At nearly 10 minutes, “Capitan” is an epic, albeit patient voyage. The video’s opening shot appears slowly out of the darkness, like the camera is wiping sleep from its eye. Strings buzz like flies as the riff crests into an industrial-sized groove behind Nicolas Dick‘s weathered croon. 

The seas have slipped over the cities
The sky laughs above us
Embarked on the ship of fools

A sea of disjointed images floods the screen: sunken statues, blooming flora, hummingbirds suspended in mid-flight. Somehow, these surreal visions come together, gravitating around the song’s steadily roving drumbeat, as if assembled by their own dream logic. Before the final curtain, a synth-streaked climax roars with all the terror and wonder of life itself.

Here’s what Dick and bassist Marylin Tognolli have to say about their new single:

“‘Capitan’ is an inhabited vessel, engulfed by reality, on its way to its own shipwreck. It is not a shipwreck conceived as divine punishment, but as an almost beneficent fate for what finds no place in the company of men. The cycle swallows everything and spits it out, the simulacra, the organic and the inert. The clip was edited as a narrative, with each image forming part of the allegory. An allegory of earthly and temporary paradises”.

Autophagie comes out January 26, 2024 on Season of Mist.

Pre-order: https://shop.season-of-mist.com/list/kill-the-thrill-autophagie
Pre-save: https://orcd.co/kttautophagiepresave

KILL THE THRILL was formed in 1989 and is composed of Nicolas Dick on vocals, guitar and lap-steel, Marylin Tognolli on bass for its founding members. Stemming from the French noisy wave of the early 90’s, their music is often described as dark, abrasive and hypnotic, full of epic moments, with a dense and rich sound mixing elements of industrial rock, post-punk, dark new wave and experimental metal.

Forging an atmosphere as dreamy as chaotic, with multiple layers and atmospheres, sometimes ambient, sometimes more hostile. Kill the Thrill interlaces orchestrated soundscapes, enriched with innumerable layers and arrangements, playing amongst the rifts to create a unique and personal work, so far from everything and so close to everyone.
The group released its first album in 1993 entitled DIG, followed by an EP: PIT (on the labels Noise Product CH and Semetary), and at that time had three musicians, already working with samples and playing with blocks of sound.

In 1996, the trio became a duo with a second album entitled LOW (Noise Product CH), recorded, mixed and produced by Nicolas Dick. The artist ErikM intervened on the interludes with sound tracks which frame each title of the group. The album is hailed by the press as a perfect balance between melody and distortion.

Over the years, tracks have appeared on a large number of compilations: La Famille (Noise Product Belgium), Serial Killer Vol 1 (Roadrunner), Brutale Generation (Semetary / WMD), Ah Quelle Belle journée (Amanita records), A Wild State Of Noise And Disorder (Pandemonium), 5 Years Of Fury (Noise Product CH), Tribute To Godflesh (Nihilistic H. Rec.), Fear Drop 14 : “Coal Fire” The Cure masterpiece Pornography, Dark 80’s (Atropine Records) etc.

Frederic De Benedetti joined the band on guitar and it’s again as a trio that the album 203 BARRIERS was released by Season Of Mist in 2001, the album again entirely recorded and produced by Nicolas Dick. With this new opus Kill the Thrill‘s music has evolved towards a daring, disturbing and more extreme sound. With international promotion and distribution, signing with the label Season Of Mist allowed an opportunity of further development for the band.

Kill the Thrill has shared stages all over Europe with other artists such as Godflesh, Killing Joke, Zeni Geva, Isis, Young Gods, Treponem Pal, Einstürzende Neubauten, La Muerte, Neurosis, Jesu, Jim Rose Circus, Grötus, Dillinger Escape Plan, Dälek, etc.

The album TELLURIQUE released in 2005 (Season Of Mist, recorded and produced by Nicolas) combines a cold and clinical industrial/metal sound with a new wave sensibility, bathed in a heavily melancholic atmosphere, but leaning more in the direction of noisy, distorted shoegazing mists than the fires of metal. The album is described by the press as an organic journey in which you must immerse yourself to feel its harshness and beauty.

This exacerbated trio asserts itself as a true entity in symbiosis, with an unfiltered and no holds barred take on music and sound.
Anger has no origin, and when the events from which it arises, physical bodies and soundwaves, can no longer contain patience and intelligibility, the sounds become the violence.

But with Kill the Thrill, violence is always suggested more than frontally expressed, it remains hemmed in and contained

In 2015 the band reissued its first under the title 1989 (Atypeek Records), a digital-only album intended as a nod to KILL THE THRILL‘s origins. During a few years of silence put to good use on the personal and musical projects of the members of the group, Kill the Thrill took the time to polish a new version which should be released at the beginning of 2024.

The band has released a limited number of albums in its career so far, but is resistant to all erosion, the secret of its longevity residing in the timelessness of the music.

An atypical band whose music is enough to itself ; a discrete band for imposing music ; a group which reveals next to nothing but pursues its sonic quest, outside of common standards. A living ambiguity: cold and hot, the calm and the storm.

“A long flow of orgasmic lava, a wave of shimmering noises that carries away everything in its path. One immerses oneself entirely in its bewitching atmospheres. We leave for a long descent on a carpet of guitars, their richness is inside, under this heap of notes and noises, under this black and disturbing mass. It’s up to you to understand what you can during a journey that is sublime”.

To Kill the Shiver reaches for the ineffable.

Line-up
Nicolas Dick – Lead vocals, guitar, lap steel, sample
Marylin Tognolli – Bass Guitar
François Rossi – Drums