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Kill The Rooster

Red Tube EP

Written by: PP on 29/03/2010 23:14:13

Time for the second band of the evening, where I'm concentrating on Danish punk rock acts having put out new material in the last month or so: Kill The Rooster. Now if you've ever seen Stars Burn Stripes play before, chances are you've also seen Kill The Rooster as it seems like these two bands are never separated when it comes to playing live. Soundwise, however, their EP "Red Tube" (yeah, the website) is a totally different affair. While still retaining some melodic punk parts, I've seen Kill The Rooster slowly shift their songwriting from strict pop punk more towards a 50/50 split between punk and rock/alternative, which has resulted in much stronger songs than in the past.

"Let Me Go" kicks things off with some unusually heavy guitars for Kill The Rooster before settling down on a medium-tempo riff and some simplistic "no, no, don't don't" lyrical output, building up to a great chorus that you'll remember the first time you hear it. I heard the song for the first time in a live environment, and by the time the second chorus section arrived, I was already singing along, which should tell you that we're dealing with rather catchy stuff here. Next up is "Stranger", which throws things decisively into punk rock territory by flooring the pedal during the chorus, but the song suffers from mediocre verses, so even though I'm loving the second half of the song and the choruses, I'll have to call it out as the weakest track on the record. Nevertheless, it establishes an intriguing, albeit distant, idea that these guys could easily be fans of both modern Green Day and Billy Talent, just with less focus on mainstream pop melodies than those two, because it's certainly possible to hear hints of both in their sound.

"Speed Soldiers" is the best track on the EP, featuring some thought provoking lyricism relating to how a soldier could feel like after his first kill: "How does it feel like to be killing for the first time, now that you've entered reality? How does it feel to be alive, seeing their faces when you sleep at night?" It's not mad catchy, but enough so to have me randomly sing along the line every now and then while walking around my apartment doing whatever. The final track, "Mary Used To Be A Virgin", finishes the EP with a much lighter, perhaps even playful vibe because of its bouncy guitar rhythm and scaling vocal melody in the beginning, although in reality the finishing track is called "Red Tube", but it's just an interlude like "YouPorn" a few tracks earlier. Both interludes feature some funky, lounge-type of instrumentation, and they do a rather good job at illustrating sonically the type of atmosphere that must surely be present at an orgy; kinky, weirded-out, but this is pretty cool and sexy sort of thing. If you ask me, I would've made both much longer, as it would've fortified that effect on the listener.

So technically there are only four tracks on the EP if you discount the two interludes. When you look at these tracks together, they portray a promising, young band (they only started the band in 2007) not afraid to mix genres and to go for their own style, but at the same time, one that still needs a little more development before they'll reach the highest grades from this scribe. The EP shows that their songwriting is close to being in good shape, with enough catchy parts to make me recommend a song or two to the readers of this site and punk/rock fans in general, but more fine-tuning is needed, before the good news start rolling in. Keep it up boys, looking forward to hearing more stuff from you in the future.

Download: Speed Soldiers
For the fans of: Green Day, Billy Talent
Listen: Myspace

Release date 20.02.2010
Self-Released