Album Review: For the Gold by Kill the Giants

St. Albans isn’t exactly famed as a hotbed of experimental musical activity, with The Zombies and, eh, Enter Shikari probably the Hertfordshire spot’s most notable musical exports – all of four decades apart. That could change, however, with the emergence of Kill The Giants, a genre-bending outfit who manage to cram thrash metal, hip-hop, classical and world music into their particularly madcap cacophony. Even more weirdly, it works.

Opener ‘The Exorcist’ starts like Slayer mixed with a haunting chant; it’s a sonic gut-punch that certainly grabs your attention. Even after countless listens, though, it still feels like you have two wildly contrasting radio stations playing at the same time. ‘Legion’ ups the ante, combining speed metal with digeridoo and what sounds like Appalachian folk music, for a cacophonic three minutes and 22 seconds of extreme ‘WTF?’

The rest of the album is slightly less schizoid, perhaps down to the presence of Paul Tipler behind the production desk, best known for his work with Placebo, Stereolab and Idlewild. The almost funky and uniformly brilliant ‘Champ’ combines menacing guitars and throbbing bass with uptempo hip-hop rhythms, and even a welcome trumpet motif, which takes the tune into DJ Shadow territory. The slow groove of ‘Feuertrunken’ manages to shoehorn Beethoven’s ‘Ode To Joy’ into its finale, while the frantic, sample-tastic ‘Great Big Monster’ and ‘Die Fledermaus’ up the BPMs considerably.

Kill The Giants have already clocked up airplay on the uber-influential BBC 6 Music and have had the title-track of this debut featured on Power, the hugely successful US TV drama produced by 50 Cent. That song is a powerhouse of hip-beats, tasty grooves and samples that wouldn’t seem out of place on Beck’s Odelay, before it breaks down into an operatic finale.

That’s the real issue here; sometimes, less really is more and maybe someone could have called a halt before they squashed yet another classical outro onto the end of a metal/hip-hop hybrid. For the most part, though, For The Gold is a weird, wacky and, most importantly, fun aural adventure.

Out Now.