Until There's Nothing Left of Us

Album Review

The continual dividing and multiplying of musical subgenres may sometimes seem absurd, but bulky as they are, all those tiny little classifications are still necessary. Kill Hannah's 2006 release Until There's Nothing Left of Us is a good example of why: an album most easily described as indie-shoegaze-electro-post-hardcore-emo-dream pop-rock. The only drawback to describing music this way is that it implies that the record is eclectic, when in fact, Kill Hannah's sound takes the most related elements of these disparate styles and omits the aspects of each that might make their combination sound disjointed. This wide sampling of so many influences finds the band dipping their creative cups into numerous genres with enough depth to integrate them and enough restraint to avoid their clichés: the slickly feminized male vocals sound sassy and adolescent but never breach into emo-catharsis; the distorted vocal harmonies call to mind My Bloody Valentine but never become lost in their own ambience; and the unabashedly heavy production transforms the buzzing of guitars into some kind of growling synthesizer without ever succumbing to vapid goth pop à la My Chemical Romance. When given a choice, Kill Hannah pick accessibility over high art on this record, but those looking for a substantial and sophisticated successor to Fugazi, the Cure or Jesus and Mary Chain should find what they're looking for here.