Although received most of the credit for mixing tales of sex, Satan, and gore with a rock/dance beat (although admittedly with more of a heavy metal edge), Chicago’s My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult specialized in similar territory for just as long. Originally formed in 1987 by Buzz McCoy (who had relocated from Boston) and Groovie Mann, the duo sought to create a worthy musical accompaniment that could be used as a soundtrack to trashy B-movies. The duo’s initial project was to make a movie (in the style of Russ Meyer and ) to be named “My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult.” The movie never got off the ground, but McCoy and Mann used the aborted movie’s title for the name of their just-formed group, as their over-the-top stage show was best described as “sensory overload” (featuring a revolving door of weird characters, props, and intense visuals). Signing on with Chicago’s renowned industrial dance label , Thrill Kill Kult issued several releases between 1989 and 1991: a self-titled EP, plus the full-lengths I See Good Spirits and I See Bad Spirits, Kooler Than Jesus, Confessions of a Knife, and Sexplosion!
By this time, the group had attracted the attention of , which signed up Thrill Kill Kult and reissued Sexplosion!, which had spawned perhaps the group’s best-known song, “Sex on Wheelz” (the track would also be featured in director Ralph Bakshi’s animated movie Cool World). The group only issued one more release for , 1994’s 13 Above the Night, before switching to the label and issuing further releases such as 1995’s Hit & Run Holiday (a concept album of sorts, which told the tale of “rebellious vixen” Krystal Starlust and her “fatal attraction” to a drifter named Apollo) and 1997’s Crime for All Seasons.
The Thrill Kill Kult failed to issue any new studio recordings from 1998 through 2000, while a collection of 18 remixes, Dirty Little Secrets, saw the light of day in 1999. But by 2001, the band had reappeared once more, issuing 2001’s The Reincarnation of Luna and 2002’s Golden Pillz: The Luna Remixes for yet another new record label, . In 2004, the label acquired most of ‘s releases, including early albums from the Kult. That same year they reissued the band’s first three albums and released a new compilation, The Best of TKK, along with a set of remixes named Diamonds & Daggerz. An album dedicated to the disco era that had sat on the shelves for a decade finally saw the light of day in 2005 when Gay, Black & Married hit the shelves. Two years later, the lounge-styled Filthiest Show in Town appeared.
In 2009, the band introduced their own label with the album Death Threat, plus the remix/re-recordings collection Sinister Whisperz: The Wax Trax Years. A lineup still anchored by McCoy and Mann toured the U.S. in 2012 for their 25th anniversary, and also released their 12th album, Spooky Tricks, in 2014. In 2017, Thrill Kill Kult mounted a complete run through their first two albums on the 30th anniversary of their founding.
In addition to their own releases, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult have contributed tracks to several film soundtracks, including Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, Gregg Araki’s Nowhere, and the hit movie The Crow (the group made a cameo appearance in the latter). Over the years, they’ve toured with such renowned (and similarly styled) bands as , , , and . ~ Greg Prato, Rovi
Light Asylum
LIGHT ASYLUM is the internationally revered, dark, electronic music project
of anti-disciplinary performance artist, founder, vocalist and producer Shannon
Funchess.
Founded in Brooklyn, New York in 2007 Funchess would begin captivating
audiences with cathartic and frenzied performances in Brooklyn’s D.I.Y. haunts
Glasslands, 285 Kent and underground art galleries, warehouses and nightclub
events Weird, China Chalet and Santos Party House in Manhattan in
2009. European music festivals and press would follow with the debut EP
which included the gothic-synth anthem “Dark Allies” and self-titled LP release
in 2011 and 2012 respectively to much success. With a passion for
collaboration, Funchess has gone on to join forces with peers around the
globe, lending her vocals to studio albums and live performances for artists
The Knife, Tv On The Radio, Elysia Crampton Chuquimia, LEECH, LCD
Soundsystem, !!! (chk, chk, chk), ADULT., Yves Tumor and Laurie Anderson to
name just a few of her many contributions to multiple genres of music.
Funchess, also a novice actor appears in the art films of artists Michelle
Handelman and A.K. Burns and has established herself as a force in the film,
music and art worlds continuing to act, DJ, produce, remix and perform as
LIGHT ASYLUM and side project Healing Xrisis.
Die Sexual
Die Sexual is the Los Angeles-based dark electronic duo of Rosselinni and Anton Floriano.
Conjuring their influences of EBM, techno and electropop, their sound is an intoxicating mix of
analog synthetics and seductive vocals. Pure dancefloor decadence forged by pulsating
industrial rhythms and dripping sensuality.
Since releasing their debut EP “Bound” at the end of 2023, their tracks continue to dominate
DJ playlists across the globe culminating with PYLON Records (Nitzer Ebb, Xymox) licensing
their three EP’s and re-releasing them as the album “Elektro Body Musique”.
Making their live debut in 2024, Die Sexual is quickly establishing itself as a coveted act having
played over 40 shows across the U.S. over the last 9 months. Sharing the stage with acts such
as Nitzer Ebb, Front Line Assembly, IAMX, Matte Blvck, Buzz Kull – they are ready to unleash
aural stimulation and unbridled energy to stages everywhere.
Die Sexual entices you to join their journey from out of the shadows to under the strobe lights.
Devora
Raised in the desert of Arizona, Devora draws inspiration from her roots, growing up around
desert creatures in a western town, experiencing the sinister lawless side of desert life, and the
characters she’s met along the way. In her modern goth-western vignettes she conjures images
of ghost towns, dark rodeos, the haunted desert, abandoned motel rooms, skylines on fire, the
open road and reckless tales of love and loss in a modern wild west. These influences have
made her into a desperado of modern culture. Her sound bridges Alternative Country melodies
with dark pop and rock hooks drawing you into her surrealist western world.
Coining her own genre, “Outlaw Pop,” she weaves visual soundscapes from a moody surrealist
wild-west dream world. Tales of eerie backroad encounters, Route 66, neon-laden casinos,
Silver City sunsets and midnight bandits are all intricately enmeshed with strong visceral
imagery and cinematic scenes straight out of the ‘dark side’ of the American southwest. Owning
the road as her home, Devora’s fierce femme fatale spirit trail-blazes the way for a new frontier
in contemporary culture.
Devora is not just music, but also an ethos of the Wild West re-imagined for our current chaotic
times. It’s not just her story – it’s all of our stories: To choose and be immersed in your own
adventure; to harness your own inner outlaw. Her music celebrates life in the fast lane while
marking the beginnings of a wild expedition ahead and the spiritedness of riding off into a
pitch-black sunset.
Devora’s debut EP, ‘Outlaw’, celebrated life in the fast lane, offering an inner glimpse into a mad
world of exile and rebellion, love and lawlessness, and the side roads and back alleys of
modern American life.
It was her first installment of a fierce collective of stories and art that illustrate a perfect portrait
of her dark wild west. The EP saw support at radio, peaking top five on the SubModern
Commercial Specialty Charts, and press write-ups at places like AltPress, Inked, and Earmilk.
The ‘Outlaw’ EP has garnered 2.3 million streams to date.
Devora has toured the US and was direct support on a sold-out series of dates with The
Warning in the spring of 2022, as well as support for BUSH on their sold out US tour in 2023.
Heavy Halo
Heavy Halo is conflict: darkness vs. light, noise vs. melody, machine vs. skin and bone.
It is wide-eye idealism dragged down to the dirt by harsh reality.
Heavy Halo is a Goth-Grunge blood-pact forged in the NYC underground between McKeever and Gosteffects.
The band takes the spirit and existential angst of Alternative and Industrial and passes it through the shattered prism of the internet age, refracted and made new.
Jagged guitars and raw electronics explode over gut-rattling 808’s. But at their core, Heavy Halo are melody junkies, lacing tracks with shameless hooks and McKeever’s 100% unfiltered vocals.
As direct as the music is, the origin of the band is anything but straightforward…
McKeever spent years studying composition at Columbia University while playing every sweat-soaked DIY venue possible. Gosteffects was banging out weaponized techno at illegal raves across the country. Finally, the two met and immediately felt something in common: both would be dead if they didn’t create music.
But Heavy Halo wouldn’t come together until after McKeever went through a chaotic spiral that sent him to New Orleans, Los Angeles, a psychiatric ward, and back.
They regrouped in New York’s pandemic wasteland, holed up in Gosteffect’s studio built in a former hospital. Driven by desperation and claustrophobia, clawing up the walls as they closed in, they ended up crafting the most emotional songs either had ever recorded. The resulting debut album was pure catharsis.
After releasing the self-titled LP on Negative Gain, the duo exploded onto the NYC live scene, performing relentlessly at venues like Elsewhere, LPR, and TV Eye. In just a year after putting out their 1st single they were already ranking on lists of “Hardest Working Bands in NYC” and “Unmissable New York Live Acts” as well as being covered in publications such as Alt Press, Post-Punk.com, and New Noise.
Feeling the pressure to annihilate any possibility of a sophomore slump, the band dug even deeper inward to write, record, and produce the follow up record themselves. They aimed for even further extremes, reaching towards apparent opposites: aggression & beauty, violence & romance, heaviness & melody – doubling down on their philosophy that songs need conflict to exist. This process almost broke them, but the resulting album, “Damaged Dream,” surpasses the debut in every way. The dream may be damaged but it’s not dead in the water quite yet.
Heavy Halo is getting up after life beats the shit out of you and spitting back in its face.
In all this conflict, Heavy Halo is the revenge.
