“So like cattle, you will come to love the prod.”
Buñuel acts as a sort of super group. The mostly-Italian quartet features Oxbow‘s Eugene S. Robinson in his usual lead role. Other performers in the group include guitarist Xabier Iriondo, drummer Francesco Valente, and bassist Andrea Lombardini. Each musician brings a very distinct background to the table, which creates a sound that proves difficult to pin down. The easiest categorizations, noise rock and post-punk, fail to capture the full experience. Instead, Killers Like Us is a blitz of untamed, unchecked testosterone.
Because I’m the handsomest man with the handsomest plan:
To cinch it tight like a belt on a waistcoat or a time,
Black and velvet with the crushed red lines,
Swinging into whatever I want them to.
Killers Like Us builds a lot of the intrigue with the first two tracks. Opener “Hornets” begins with a brief monologue from Robinson, a common vehicle for his delivery, that cracks at the edges with desperation. Soon, he is joined by a sludge-infused riff and a slow-paced rhythm section to set the stage for the album overall. Immediately, “When God Used a Rope”, the album’s lead single, creates significant juxtaposition by turning up the tempo. Lazily-sung vocals drift above and below a noisy guitar lead, sounding more like ’68 than the Earth we heard on track 1. What is already clear, however, is that this album seeks not to please. Instead, it aims to create doubt and unease, a mission accomplished even this early in the tracklist.
“Eat, feed, full, grow,
White-skulled and then white no more.“
“Crack Shot” takes yet another left turn with an actual sung chorus and more digestible song structure. This track could be the key to ‘getting into‘ the album, in part due to its excellent transition into “Stocklock“. Despite the sound being a tad bit brighter, the lyrics again predict doom, the inevitability of suffering, bloodshed, destruction, etc. Robinson links these themes to the album’s title, and the inherent ambiguity – are the aforementioned killers fond of us, or are they just the same as we are? As with all other questions on the album, Buñuel does not find it necessarily to provide answers, only rumination.
“For the Cops” also shows a (slightly) more melodic side and features some of the most exciting instrumentation on the album. The dissonance between Robinson and the band are deployed to full effect here. “Even the Jungle”, on the other hand, comes off as one of the least listenable tracks. Primarily driven by droning guitar beneath spoken word passages, its effect depends on the listener’s buy-in so far. In particular, it comes with potential of being labelled as pretentious and monotone. At the same time, it arguably is a key part to approaching an understanding of the album, complete with mission statement of “considering the ramifications of what exactly it is that happens when a good man turns bad”.
Killers Like Us risks turning off a prospective audience through its unapologetic and raw sound, but that is surely the way Buñuel wants things. It may easily take four or five listens to break through its surface, which may represent too large a leap for many. However, endless charisma and consistent surprises lurk below and are worth spelunking for.
8/10
Killers Like Us comes out this Friday, February 18 on Profound Lore Records. You can pre-order it here.