Novakill- Kill Everyone

Artist: Novakill
CD Title: Kill Everyone
Label: Metropolis Records
Reviewer: Mattew Johnson
Date: 7-2-05

Just a year after releasing their debut album, Australian EBM duo Novakill is back with ten brand new tracks and two new versions of earlier ones. This time their effort seems more focused, more rooted. The two artists have spent a lot of time in the studios designing their own synthesizer tones for this material, and it shows; this time the film clips and other samples seem more effectively placed, and the songs as a whole seem more cohesive, less self-consciously modern. “Dead Inside” and “Why Won’t You Die!?!” are solid, mid-tempo dance floor tracks, while “Blind” and “Cyberland” are hypersonic drum machine attacks. The lyrics can occasionally venture into corny science fiction territory, but the band’s tendencies towards lyrical monotony actually help propel things along. The repetitious chorus of “Skream for Me” helps amplify the songs aggression, for example, while the snarling, slightly-distorted antagonism of “Mostly Machine” is reminiscent of the Electric Hellfire Club in their heyday, a condemnation of consumer society set to a four-on-the-floor dance beat. Two remixed versions of tracks from the first Novakill release finish out the CD, with “Shoknova” standing out in particular with its harsh vocals and bracingly distorted electronic effects. A solid follow-up to their first record, this fifty-minute CD shows a band that’s matured without getting soft.

Why won’t you die?! Why won’t you go to www.novakill.com?!