“Suzie”
from the album Civilian
2006
iTunes
Another much-hyped guitar band (it’s easy to lose track as to where we are in the current slew, particularly if you find yourself tuning into one of the indie stations like XFM and are over the age of 18, or if you find it hard to keep track of every single movement and blog entry on Myspace), and for once, the hype is well-deserved. Boy Kill Boy were generated out of listlessness in Theydon Bois by a dissatisfied group of rock-loving mates and are currently all over the airwaves with excellent single “Suzie,“ which features on this debut album. Can the rest of the tracks hold up to some pretty weighty expectations?
In short, yes. It’s a little heavier than the usual guitar music which has come out of the last five post-Britpop years which can comfortably be classed as indie, without ever going quite as heavy as to bother the Kerrang! audience too much (this is no heavy rock band). Drawing on the kind of nu-metal/emo American influences which have seen bands like Lostprophets able to turn their sound into the epic, by equal parts doom-laden and euphoric stadium rock which would also work remarkably well in a fairly intimate venue, Civilian marries Killers-style synths and riffs (“Six Minutes”) with classic pop-rock choruses (“Suzie,” “On and On”) and some really great slower pop tracks like Ivy Parker — which manages to nail a jangly Beatles-esque pentatonic piano line to some big rock basslines and power chords. An excellent debut.