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.

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