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By Robert O'Brien
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 17, 1996
Death Ride 69 and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult
Friday, October 11
Heading down to the Club Congress, I expected to be impressed. Among the unsmiling, black-clad masses huddled outside the door, I felt just a bit out of place in a "mod" three-button suit..I arrived in time to catch only the last 30 seconds of Tucson locals Spillblanket. I fear that someone needs to get a firm grip on the knob marked "angst" and turn it firmly counterclockwise. Ah Well.
Having never heard Death Ride 69, I found them to have a commanding stage presence, aided and abetted by their screetching lead singer, who appeared to be the long-lost daughter of Bill the Cat and Elvira. They opened the set with a guttural thunder across conveniently placed tom-toms. Musically, it seemed a touch on the derivative side -- the hooks ranged from the NIN to Sister Machine Gun to Front Line Assembly. Admittedly, though, due to the ummm... unique acoustics of Congo, my hearing was already becoming a bit muddled.
If the music was homogeneously industrial, the audience certainly was eclectic. Mercifully absent were the obnoxious, Pantera-type denizens of the mosh pit who, these days, seem to materialize at any show harder than Neil Diamond. From sorority types to apparent Jim Rose refugees, I'd rate the average visible piercing count at five a piece. Here's to the Nihilistic Nineties...
After an appropriate waiting period, or reverential pause if you prefer, the headliner finally took the stage. My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult took their lengthy moniker from the never released soundtrack of the film with the same name. This Chicago-based band is one of the few and proud who can pull off reciting their own name as a lyric. Perhaps this was endemic to the Wax Trax! era, as former label-mates KMFDM also frequently engaged in this practice.
In contrast to KMFDM's old five-guitar army, the TKK makes such extensive use of samples and electronics that they perform with only two musicians -- the taciturn keyboardist and Levi Levi, the fearsome bassist. The effect is quite satisfactory, if redolent of karaoke... When Jacky's soulful tones intermingle with the vicious snarls of Kitty Kildare, the audio-visuals approach overload=blaxploitation meets Jayne Mansfield over sampled slasher-flick shrieks. Then the glowering specter of lead singer Groovie Mann engages interstelar, and the demonic drama opens. The set was heavily wighted in favor of older material, such as "Kooler than Jesus," "Ride the Mindway," and "The Velvet Edge." We were also treated to the grace of the awful movie Cool World: TKK's contribution to the soundtrack, "Sex on Wheelz."
The presentation was faultless. The band's industrial roots were evident, yet amid themes of drugs, devils and perversion lurked an element of humor. A humor lost on the audience, who persisted in violent moshing to what amounts to... I hate to admit it... DISCO.
On the way out, to judge by facial expressions, it seemed that no one enjoyed it. I guess that's characteristic of this modern crowd, man. After all, people who want to nurture the image of death don't smile much. Once I was "riding the Mindway" home, I cued up "13 Above the Night," the band's '93 effort. What little remained of my auditory functions told me that I'd just seen something rare. This was a band which sounded far better live than on CD.
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