Absolutely fucking sadistic.

Here's another band I don't really have any comparison for. Craw is somewhat similar, though still not the same. I've had this album (Face of Collapse) on repeat recently. In terms of technical, heavy music, this is the sound I really tend to. A palpable amount of despair is conveyed.

I don't recall exactly how I first heard of them. I probably read their name on a Wikipedia page when I was new to noise tock. They flew way over my head upon first listening.

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This was my initial response to most of the more algebraic noise bands. Though, my tastes slowly became more complicated, mainly a result of me tangentially (and slowly) maturing as a musician.

Before Killmen came around, I had a decent summer trying to emulate a solid collection of inspirations: Laughing Hyenas, early Swans, Steel Pole Bathtub, Test Dept., Ministry circa Land of Rape and Honey, the first Sonic Youth EP, etc. And that was a lot of fun--but not wholly satisfying. I'd earned the brute force and energy, the whole violence part of it, but now I needed to try making something more musical with it.

And it all happened by accident. Starting with Craw--and Wikipedia, again--the reference material flowed in steady for a good while (Dazzling Killmen, Zeni Geva, Kiss it Goodbye, Bastro, Rodan, Collossamite, what a time!).

I have a pretty distinct memory during this period about listening to Killmen. Through a long drive at night, I listened to their album, "Recuerda," an experience that paired really well with midwestern, October stillness: carried against your will, pushed around brainlessly, going through motions in dead-black, guided by symbols of withering time, sickly orange street lights, endless corn fields, dead roads and dead leaves. The fatality of crisp, autumn darkness felt sharper and paler, the bleak repetition of "Spiral Mirror" and "Code Blue" making life feel a little like a horror movie again.

Their song, "Numb," made sense from a more literal perspective. If there's a feeling this band can really convey--at least to me--it's the feeling of only enduring. It's the kind of survival that faces you with domestic violence and also household chores--and then asks you what you're really made out of. In my experience, numbness is what allows you to subsist through these things. It makes you appear structured.

At least, this is what Dazzling Killmen feels like to me: like visiting a house I'd never wanted to live in, now reflected on both as intimately beautiful--and deeply terrible.