"We hope you grow to love them as much as we do." - Mikey Way, My Chemical Romance
Meet KILL HANNAH - the biggest band you've never heard of. Despite having no previous TV, radio or press promotion in the UK, Chicago-based five piece KILL HANNAH already draw crowds of over 1000 people to their headline shows here. Add to the fact that they have over 200,000 MySpace friends (plus over 11 million song plays on their jukebox) and the video to their first UK single (out March 17), Lips Like Morphine, has received nearly 1.6 million plays on YouTube alone, and it's clear that KILL HANNAH are rock's best kept secret.
Dubbed "the missing link between The Killers, The Cure, Smashing Pumpkins and My Chemical Romance", no one sounded or indeed looked like KILL HANNAH when they first broke free of their art school roots. Releasing two albums in the USA - 2003's For Never And Ever and the 2006 follow-up Until There's Nothing Left of Us (which debuted at #8 in the official Billboard Heatseeker's chart) - they have been called "new romantic", "darkwave", and even "goth", but these tags don't do any justice to KILL HANNAH. They are all of the above but also so much more.
While KILL HANNAH cut For Never And Ever far from home in sunny Los Angeles, Until There's Nothing Left of Us was conceived and created back home in Chicago during the dead of winter. That, according to frontman Mat Devine, stamps every second of the album with a distinctive energy. "Everything came from the stimulation I get from this place," he explains. "I live in view of the entire skyline; the trains literally circle me. It's almost like the city itself envelops me. Like any metropolis, it can be dark at times, but super-romantic too. From nine to five it's absolute chaos, and then after six o'clock it's completely desolate. At the lakeshore it might be totally placid and serene, and in the next minute these crazy waves crash in and freeze as massive piles of jagged ice. In a way, our music is like that too. From track to track on this record, and even within each song, we have moments of triumph and then we have moments of creepy romance."
The band's first album release in the UK will be Until There's Nothing Left Of Us with added songs from For Never And Ever (including hit single Kennedy), plus two new unreleased tracks. Production comes from Johnny K (Plain White Ts), Sean Beavan (No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode) and Tim Palmer (The Cure, Manic Street Preachers). The album also includes 2 songs mixed by Chris Lord Alge (Simple Plan, Manic Street Preachers, My Chemical Romance). Release is set for March 24, 2008.
Creative in every aspect of their lives, various members have also initiated other projects. Frontman Mat Devine co-founded the Chicago Suicide Club, a lifestyle brand dedicated to art, fashion and events. As part of the underground music scene, the CSC has produced DJ events / aftershow parties with members of Shiny Toy Guns, Peaches, Ladytron, Ministry, Marilyn Manson, NIN, Tweaker, Gnarls Barkley, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Assassins, Bauhaus/Love & Rockets, The Ramones, The Sounds, Superstars of Love, VNV Nation and Jared Leto. Bass player Greg Corner is a DJ and co-founder of Dark Wave Disco, a monthly Chicago dance party that has featured Tommie Sunshine, Classixx formerly Young Americans, The Teenagers, Steve Aoki, Carlos D. of Interpol, Uffie, Lady Sovereign, The Sounds and Junior Sanchez, as well as The Faint, The MisShapes, Go!Motion, Blake Miller of Moving Units and Adam 12 of She Wants Revenge. It has received national press in SPIN Magazine and URB Magazine as one of the hottest parties in America.
