Kill the Client--Set for Extinction

I've been really into that show Hoarders lately.  I used to watch it on television when I had easy access to cable (it's been a while though), and I revisited some of the crunchiest and most disturbing early episodes on Netflix On Demand during my failed bid as a salesman (if you are a salesman, I'd like to applaud your strength and the fact that you don't have a soul.  I envy you).  That show is dark shit, man, even by my generous standards, and it is sometimes really fucking difficult to watch.  I find myself yelling at the television on a regular basis, asking the hoarder questions like "Do you really not see the problem with people finding a bunch of mummified rats underneath your garbage pile?" or "You take a dump WHERE?!?"

It's pretty fun, and the closest I'll get to reality television.

The show doesn't make me feel compassionate for people who have this problem, though.  I know that I probably should, because it's a mental illness and is usually a person's shitty and poorly-reasoned reaction to severe anxiety (one of the many perfectly American problems that we face).  But I just can't; it's like looking at somebody who's on fire, and you say "Holy shit, dude, you're on fire!" and the guy says "No I'm not," and then acts like a dick about it for the entire time you put the fire out.

One of the happy side effects of that show, however, is that it motivates my wife and I to get our apartment clean.  I've done several Goodwill trips and gotten a lot of dishes done after watching episodes of Hoarders, and I plan to keep that train a-runnin' (there are a few pieces of furniture that I'm trying to get my wife to let me get rid of because they just take up space).  The other major side effect of watching the show is an inflated sense of self worth.  I get to sit there and smugly judge people from the comfort of my couch, and when I watch what they do on camera when somebody tries to throw away a teddy bear full of bedbugs, I know that my life doesn't suck as hard as theirs.

It might sound horrible, but it's what everybody does when they watch that show, even if they aren't man enough to admit it.

Kill the Client are equally dark and make me feel similarly awesome, though not in the same disdainful, "I'm-better-than-this-thing-I'm-paying-attention-to" sort of way.  Kill the Client are dirty, thick, hateful grind of the first order, and listening to them makes me feel sorry for the rest of the world, that so many people who think that my taste in music is "icky," or "scary," or "God awful," (all direct quotes from my coworkers) will never get to hear this music through my ears.  It must suck to be them, all right.  I always tell people when they get all uppity and annoying about the music that I'm listening to that, if it were all up to me, that this kind of thing would be playing everywhere, from the grocery stores to the bridal shops to under the awnings where the gas pumps are kept.

What a wonderful world that would be for me.

Kill the Client's newest offering, Set for Extinction, has all the markings of being a crusty grindcore record.  Pictures of guns?  Check.  Political and religious imagery?  Check.  Marks of pestilence and decay?  Well, that's a vulture and a couple of rats up there, so I'm going to have to give that a double check.  And what's the first song called?  "No Leaders"?  Awesome.

Super awesome.

The entire album is an awesomely crusty whirlwind of misanthropic grind.  In fact, I like to picture it as the perfect soundtrack to Hoarders, at the point when the family goes "Fuck this, we have to get this crap out of here."  In my mind, Kill the Client starts blasting their hateful screeds over the video of some stupid old woman crouching in her front yard, screaming "Don't throw away my pizza boxes!  YOU CAN'T TAKE MY CATS!  I DON'T CARE HOW DEAD THEY ARE!"  And meanwhile, in the background, you can see CPS shoving her crying children into a car.

"That's my mother's jewelry box!"

"But, ma'am, it's covered in human feces and it's broken.  I found it under an old console television."

"Doo doo washes right off, stupid!  GIVE THAT TO ME!"

(Children in the background) "Mommy!  Help!  They're taking us away!"

This is playing the whole time.

If at all possible, I'd like to encourage you to see Kill the Client live to really get a good idea of what the sound is like.  The record does a good job of recreating it, but the live energy is so much more potent and palpable.  I got to see them live for the first time fairly recently with my homebros in Lions of Tsavo, and the sound is indescribably heavy and aggressive.  If you're lucky, James (the bassist for KTC) will be wearing his cool Bathtub Shitter shirt and you'll get to watch Morgan MacGyver a stationary fan back together using only his wits, a pair of hockey tickets, and some appropriate tools.  Then you'll get to watch Brian Fajardo (also of Gridlink and Noisear), the most unassuming person you'd see walking around, unleash his inner beast behind the drum kit.  It's fucking breathtaking.  And he's surprisingly laid back about when you come up to tell him that you love him and then try to steal his shoes in order to gain his powers.

But I'm sure that happens to him all the time.

So if you're a maladjusted misanthrope like me, you should go check out Kill the Client, because they probably have about as much disdain for people as you do, but they express it in a much more awesome way.  Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go do some vacuuming.  All this talking about Hoarders reminds me that it's time for me to clean everything in my apartment while I scream "I'M NOT LIKE THEM!"  And then the police will come over.

Listen to Kill the Client

Or just steal it.  It's really easy.