Kill the Easter Rabbit, Apokatastasis: Reconstitution of the Primordial
I don’t know in particular what Naples outfit Kill the Easter Rabbit (abbreviated KTER on their album artwork and elsewhere) have against the mythical holiday hare. Being a remnant of the Pagan origins of the Christian Easter holiday, I’d think the Easter Rabbit is way more metal than, say, Jesus, but certainly there are those who’d argue that point. Christians, mostly, one would expect. No matter, whatever anger the Easter Rabbit has aroused in the three dudes comprising Kill the Easter Rabbit, surely their aggressions are worked out on their first full-length, Apokatastasis, available now via Trips und Träume.
Kill the Easter Rabbit (I’ll grant it’s a lot of fun to say) specialize in a modern type of sub-doom, with marked influence from High on Fire, Entombed and any number of noise rock acts. Apokatastasis — the title defined by the Stoics as the restoration of the primordial — is eight tracks/47 minutes of surprisingly diverse material working within that context. Beginning with its opening title track, the album moves through swatches of genre tints, held together by tonal consistency and the steady drumming of Ciro O., who seems ready to insert a double-kick at a moment’s notice, mostly to the benefit of the given song. “Apokatastasis” is a groover, among the album’s slower-paced and more doomed material, the riffs of guitarist/vocalist Lorenzo de Stefano held out in multiple, cleanly-produced layers and deftly switching to a thrashier approach later in the song.
It’s in this sound that the High on Fire influence comes out. Though I think they owe just as much allegiance to the Venom camp, or at least Venom and Celtic Frost as channeled by Entombed, that’s also where High on Fire took their primary influence from, so the commonality stands. The influence is more direct on “Blind King,” which shares more than its basic verse progression with “Devilution” from High on Fire’s 2005 opus, Blessed Black Wings. Likewise, though “Twilight of the Idols” grinds in its midsection like the best of Entombed, it owes its chorus almost completely to High on Fire’s “Waste of Tiamat” from 2007’s Death is This Communion. I don’t begrudge Kill the Easter Rabbit this influence, and to their credit I’ll say that both de Steffano and bassist Emanuele Schember are more melodically capable as vocalists than was Matt Pike on either of those albums and their work is a big part of separating the two bands sonically, but the similarities as notable nonetheless.
Where Kill the Easter Rabbit really do the work of distinguishing themselves is on Apokatastasis’ later tracks. The closing duo of “The Waste at Dawn” and “Silent Hour,” both songs topping seven minutes in succession as the longest cuts on the album, are also the most stylistically adventurous, with de Steffano and Schember reaching vocally — a Seemless-style chorus makes “The Waste at Dawn” a highlight, and the blown-out cries on “Silent Hour” match that song’s riffs so well that if you’re not paying attention you might miss its verses entirely — though it’s really the guitars that stand the track out among its peers and prove it such and effective ending note. Kill the Easter Rabbit, who’ve been together since 2002 and released two demos, an EP and a split 10” with Italian countrymen doomers Black Land before Apokatastasis, still have some work to do in developing their musical personality, but there’s no denying their full-length rocks. As “Silent Hour” feeds back to its finish, I find myself pleasantly surprised at some of the diversity in Kill the Easter Rabbit, and as lasting impressions go, that far outweighs any harsh judgments of redundancy.
Kill the Easter Rabbit on MySpace
Tags: Italy, Kill the Easter Rabbit, Naples, Trips und Träume
