Despite arriving in my inbox under the heading of avant-garde, Kill the Unicorn are a profoundly metallic prospect, albeit with awkward time signatures and atypical instrumentation scattered across the surface. Certainly, such desires to break with convention are to be applauded at a time when music seems to be becoming more conventional than ever (or at least more neatly separated into its own little categories), and Kill The Unicorn hark back to the mid-90s when bands such as System of a Down, Faith No More, Dog Fashion Disco and Jane’s Addiction ruled the airwaves, seemingly in spite of their musical idiosyncrasies. Indulging a wide-eyed odyssey into the unknown over eleven tracks and forty-minutes, Kill the Unicorn are, without doubt, one of the most eccentric and exciting acts to cross my desk in some time.
In all honesty, the opening track, ‘Motoko Kusanagi’ does not get the album off to the flying start that it might have done. Undeniably heavy and musically proficient, it wrong-foots the listener into thinking this is going to be just a.n.other metalcore release, albeit one that is raised above par by Matteo Leuthold’s superhuman abilities on the percussion, and so it falls to ‘ode to spot’ (via the short, largely pointless segue of ‘dreams in 56k’) to really deliver on the band’s promise of offering something special. Neatly swerving between a full-force metallic battering and weird, jazz-funk breakdowns that sound like the band have been at the Dr Seuss, ‘ode to spot’ is disarmingly different. It highlights the band’s potential and effortlessly engages the listener, who now clings to the edge of their seat awaiting each fresh development. Edging into sci-fi territory, ‘Wormhole to Gliese 556c’ has a taut Meshuggah vibe, that continues through into the grinding ‘F.U.C.K.U.P.’ Sensibly, the band don’t overplay their hand, and the relatively straight ‘wormhole…’ only serves to make the stuttering horror of ‘F.U.C.K.U.P.’ all the more intense. The first half of this dizzying record concludes with ‘me and my velociraptor’, a gentle, multi-faceted instrumental that would not sound out of place on a prog rock record. Make no mistake, Kill the Unicorn my cast a wry eye at the metal scene, but these musicians are masters of their art and god help anyone who forget that.
The second half of the album kicks into brutal gear with ‘Conquistador’, another track that digs into the Meshuggah song book, and, despite an occasional slip into rap territory, ‘conquistador’ is simply a great metal track that will have the whole pit explode in unison. In contrast, ‘Catacombs’ is a schizophrenic nightmare that sounds like Miles Davis going head to head with Dillinger Escape Plan. Another reminder that the band are insanely talented, the results are so expansively interesting that you can’t help but be drawn in, if only to see what happens next. A searing attempt to, apparently, create the heaviest thing ever, ‘Ausgerfuchst’ is a battering ram of sound that is not unlike undergoing a trepanning with a screwdriver. It does not end there, however, and ‘rendezvous with Cleopatra VII’ somehow ups the aggression quotient, recalling the devastating might of Botch in the process. It remains only for final track, ‘Pitch Black VR’, to leave the listener sweaty and drained after a final third that is unremittingly brutal.
There are two things to keep in mind with Kill the Unicorn. The first is that they are truly exceptional musicians. The LP is tighter than a butterfly’s back passage and utterly dizzying in its scope. The second is that the band are clever enough with their self-editing to understand when to deliver a knock-out metallic blow and when to head straight for Loony Tunes territory. Get the balance wrong and become a joke; get it right and you’ll be revered for your ability to edge outside the norm whilst delivering the metallic hits that an audience so badly craves. Kill the Unicorn deftly maintain their grasp on the latter, using the more outré elements to add texture to the song rather than allowing them to become the song. In short, ‘Prism’ is fun, innovative and devastating – check it out, you may just discover your new favourite band in the process. 9
