Sunday, June 12, 2011

Armed & Ready: Killer

Another band from the Armed & Ready section of Kerrang! Killer were from Wiltshire, which is made to sound like something from the TV series Children of the Stones in the article. Like a lot of the Armed & Ready bands, they had a healthy dose of ambition, proclaiming their music "unusually original", and even designing their own scaled dragon/cat hybrid logo, which they no doubt hoped would be gracing back patches and school jotters up and down the land.
Killer are based in Salisbury and have problems in persuading anyone 'of influence' to travel to the standing stones-strewn wilds of Wiltshire and witness their brand of murderous metal. This in spite of a five track demo tape which, the band claim, has attracted the interest of several record companies.
A cut-throat quintet, Killer have been together for a year and comprise alan Marsh (vocals), Andy boulton (guitar), Ray Disomore (guitar), andy Robbins (bass) and Steve Pierce (drums). Their emblem - a snarling, scaled dragon-cat hybrid, very Dennis Wheately - is a successful amalgam of weirdness, witchcraft and demonic design.
In the past two months, the group have begun to venture into the capital's venues and immoedestly proclaim that they regularly receive 'amazing responses' considering their unkown status. "We are now attracting audiences in excess of 250 every time we play at the Horseshoe in London's Tottenham Court Road," says Bassman Robbins proudly.
Musically, Killer play an 'unusually original' brand of HM 'combining hard-driving rhythms with closely-knit guitar and vocal harmonies'.
Source: Kerrang! No. 3, September 1981

3 comments:

  1. My old Kerrang! collection, or should that read Kollection(?), will be coming down out of that loft before the summer's out. I promised a long while back to print that Tony Iommi is God letter...I have not forgotten.
    As for Killer, i'd like to see their band logo - a dragon-cat eh?

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  2. Get those old Kerrangs down from the loft, you won't regret it. They provide an incredible window in 1982/83, and you can see Metal changing, as the NWOBHM had it last gasps and Hair Metal and Thrash started appearing.

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  3. Killer later transmogrified into the better known Tokyo Blade, and their "Killer" era recordings are about to be released officially by High Roller Records.

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