By Kirk Greenwood
Photo by Olivia Vaughn
Kill You in the Face-it’s an ironically off-putting name for a band whose upbeat, poppy sound seems to jive more with their MySpace claim of being “all around nice guys” than the morbid mental image the name conjures.
The origin of the name betrays the band members’ South Philly roots more than it does their musical, lyrical or personal style.
Years ago, guitarist Mike Romeo and drummer-vocalist Alejandro Torres met friends at a local watering hole regularly on weeknights. Slowly they were introduced to the moronic allures of one of this city’s most beloved pastimes, the bar trivia game, Quizzo. One night, the guys decided to play, and someone suggested ‘Kill You in the Face’ as a team name.
“It was initially just a prank, a way to get the Quizzo host to say something ridiculous,” says Romeo, “but we decided we liked the sound of it, and it just kind of stuck after that.”
The band with the hyperaggressive name still isn’t afraid to shake things up. They just added a new member to their lineup-a trumpeter, of all things!
John Slavin is a jazz major at Temple who channels R&B and hip hop influences and credits Philly indie frontrunners Man Man with inspiring him to apply his talents to the popular idiom.
“With John, there are a lot of new things we can do in terms of dynamics. It’s unusual to have a rock band with a horn. I don’t think any of us saw it coming-how well it was going to work,” bassist Adam Plante says.
Plante, Romeo and Torres are working with Slavin to fit trumpet parts into the band’s standing repertoire of songs. “I still have Kill You In The Face training wheels on right now,” says Slavin, who expects to appear onstage with the band for the first time during a Nov. 20 show at West Philly’s Danger! Danger! Gallery.
Making room for Slavin has been a welcomed challenge for a band that prides itself on being musically diverse and democratic. “We each have different, but overlapping influences. We all bring something a little different to writing and recording,” Torres says.
Every member of Kill You in the Face takes an equal part in songwriting and instrumentation processes; they balance and feed off each other’s creative energies.
“We don’t come into songwriting with any preconceived ideas about how we want to sound. We could have a kind of groady sounding song followed by a more melodically driven one. All the instrumental parts are very organic, very random,” says Romeo.
The lyrical content of their songs tells the story of humanity’s struggle against space invaders in a postapocalyptic future. It focuses on the travails of The Mighty Atlas, a military leader turned alien collaborationist, and his sons, who lead a heroic human rebellion. Narrating scenes of intergalactic carnage and personal conflict from these differing perspectives enables Romeo, Torres and Plante to graft their own life experiences and emotions onto their characters.
Kill You in the Face has worked with the innovative South Philly indie label Punk Rock Payroll since 2008 when it released a split 7-inch record “Battle of the Vans” with fellow Punk Rock Payrollers, The Extraordinaires. The band released its six-song debut EP The Mighty Atlas in June 2009, following a visionary business model proposed by Punk Rock Payroll founder Frede Zimmer.
Zimmer has a knack for finding unexpected and provocative ways to package his artists’ content. The Mighty Atlas, for instance, is delivered to fans in the form of a cellophane wrapped cartoon-style plastic ray gun that looks like something off the shelf of a toy store rather than a record store. Tracs are contained on USB drive extruding from the gun’s handle. The USB-gun also includes is a making-of video that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the ray gun production line, band photos and illustrations of the Atlas storyline.
Band members take turns hand molding, sanding and painting the ray guns on the kitchen table of the South Philly row home that serves as their practice and recording space. “This is a totally different approach to thinking about music,” says Romeo. “Each [ray gun] is produced specially and uniquely by us. If you get one, you know it’s one-of-a-kind!”
