The Dallas, TX-based quartet
Kill the Client are one of America's best grindcore bands. Along with
Phobia and
Defeatist, they're revitalizing a subgenre that was pioneered by England's
Napalm Death on their 1987 debut album,
Scum, and they've drawn a line in the sand as far as speed and overall sonic hostility.
Kill the Client's previous three releases, all on the
Willowtip label, set a benchmark for politically engaged lyrics and musical ferocity. This disc, their debut for Relapse, packs 19 songs into just over 26 minutes, with track titles like "Cull the Herd," "Postmortem Exoneration," "Primetime Dogma," and "Death of Reality" expressing the band's nihilistic, pissed-off world-view in concise blasts. The production is clean, avoiding the blurriness of punk rock but keeping the hail-of-bricks brutality of their music intact. The drums (by Bryan Fajardo, also a member of
GridLink) are like an avalanche, the guitars and bass distorted and raw, the vocals a savage howl. This is some of the angriest music being made in America, or anywhere on Earth, in 2010. ~ Phil Freeman