My Roommate and I rolled into the wet mouth of Hell right after the opening acts finished boiling over and now stood mingling with the crowd. Light Asylum, Die Sexual, Devora, and Heavy Halo cracked open the humid April air at Mohawk last month, making way for the Lords of Darkness—My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult—to take on the second wing of their Delicate Terror Tour. A torrential downpour kept us from seeing the first names on the bill, but by the time we got to the show all that had burned off. Now, it was just a lingering dampness and anticipatory jitters that kept the air heavy.
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult (TKK), a pioneer of electronic industrial dance music in the late 80s, actually began life as an art film. The founding members, Groovie Mann (Frankie Nardiello) and Buzz McCoy (Marston Daley) developed the concept piece together after touring with Ministry. Unfortunately, the film never came to fruition, but the soundtrack produced for it was right up the alley of Wax Trax! records, an independent label out of Chicago with a proclivity for the unusual. Early adopters of the industrial movement, Wax Trax! signed an unholy host of clanging metal soundscapes, driven frequently by sequencers, danceable rhythms, and provocative lyrics and imagery—the kind that drew frequent fire from censorship groups like the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center), who took particular issue with TKK’s sexual and satanic themes. Other acts on the label included KMFDM, Underworld, Meat Beat Manifesto, and several side projects from members of Ministry. Wax Trax! was sold in the 90s, but many of the projects it fostered continue to create today.
shot on my own personal unwieldy digi cam.
CHRIST! (Or, maybe Anti-Christ is more appropriate?) What a show these satanists put on! Groovie Mann lived up to his name, providing a crawling, powerful, and frequently haunting vocal performance, while Buzz McCoy weaved in a smorgasbord of samples from old Hollywood films, interviews, and guitar riffs on keys. The pair makes an incredible act alone, what with the back and forth between live and clipped audio. It sounded something like a phone call, frequently intercepted, between layers of Hell.
But the vocals would lose so much of their power without the firm grounding of the rhythm section. Mimi Star added a tinge of funk with her faithful twang of the bass, providing a backdrop of constant gloom to build off of. Her performance during “Badlife”, one of the slower songs in the setlist, was particularly excellent, driven with consistent power and such an effortless groove. Gaps in the vocals on this track spotlit her wonderfully. Justin Thyme’s performance on drums meshed perfectly, and the two together provided the ambiance that allowed the vocals and samples to really leap out at the audience.
And the lighting—equally leaping—was a constant shift between deep reds, blues, and purples, which caused the wooden set pieces—little licks of fire slathered with UV fluorescent paint—to dance and flicker in the changing colors. A thick fog hovered over the stage for most of the show, with Groovie Mann frequently slipping in and out of the cloud. It was a bit unsettling, how I couldn't track him. The whole demonic experience felt imported straight out of a 90s warehouse rave, sans warehouse. The climatic concluding song—”Daisy Chain 4 Satan (Acid & Flowers remix)”—got all the old school oddities who crept out to watch this show moving wildly. It was a delight to see a snapshot of a community that's been dancing long before I was born. What an honor to dance among them! Hail Satan and party on, Thrill Kill Kult!