by David Wilikofsky
The seeds of Kill Alters were sewn when Bonnie Baxter found dozens of cassette tapes made by her mother from the 1970s up until the 1990s. Listening back to these home recordings forced her to recall and face childhood traumas, and part of the way she tried to process all of this was by recontextualizing these recordings into her music. Joined by Nicos Kennedy and Hisham Bharoocha in this endeavor, the group put out two mini-albums in the mid 2010s before seemingly moving on to other projects. All of that changed last week, when the trio released their debut album after a five year wait. It’s a clear level up for the band, a set of music as intense as it is laser focused.
Kill Alter’s first two mini-albums, 2015’s self-titled effort and 2016’s no self helps, featured everything from humorous spoken word skits to abrasive industrial clangor. While they had their fair share of thrilling moments, in retrospect they’re less razor sharp statements of intent than documents of a band trying to find their identity. Armed to the Teeth L.M.O.M.M. arrives fully formed, playing out like a fever dream where echoes of the past swirl with sounds of the present. Vocals seem to ricochet off the walls, echoing through a deep abyss. Beats are fractured and frenetic, rarely taking a moment to breathe. Specters lurking in the background mumble incoherently and unleash malevolent laughter. Tracks veer from Money Store-era Death Grips intensity to crystalline mutant pop. Though these composite parts have largely remained the same, they appear in sharper focus than ever before.
Some of the clearest moments of evolution come when the band quote themselves. In the album’s opening moments we hear a halting synth line lifted from “A09”, the opener to their self-titled 2015 album. Where the original usage of those synths anticlimactically fizzles and fades into a percussive beat, here it helps ratchet up the tension that builds quickly over a few minutes. Rambling voices become increasingly frantic as the synths swirl menacingly in the background, punctuated by a very clear question (“Are you ready to die little girl?”) and answer (an emphatic “Yes!”). There’s no throwaway notes here, no ideas that go nowhere. Though the track is filled to brim, there’s not an ounce of fat to be trimmed.
A recent interview in The Quietus details the many challenges (both economic and artistic) that plagued the album’s creation, but there’s no sign of that struggle in the finished product. Armed To The Teeth L.M.O.M.M. is the sound of a group fully formed, working at the height of their powers. It’s one of the few albums that was truly worth the wait.