Sister Machine Gun
Marvel Kind/Kill Hannah
April 27, Metro, Chicago
Photos available in music review photo album
It was a night full of tall, skinny musicians. SMG fans came from as far away as
Denver for this concert, which was the SMG 6.0 record release show. There were
two local opening bands for SMG: MarvelKind, and Kill Hannah.
Marvel Kind had a good stage set -blacklights on white cloths set below 4 TVs on
pedestals, the TVs playing swirly ambient patterns. The band members were all dressed
in red, and as I mentioned earlier....were skinny. And tall. These guys did ok, they had a full
line up of guitars, drums, electronics and vocals (two band members contributing), but I
wouldn't necessarily have sold my firstborn to see just them.
After the first song it was evident that they suffer from a case of the KMFDM/Thrill Kill Kult
name masturbation disease, especially noted when the TVs had MK showing up on them.
The music was well done, hard edged rock with heavy guitars - which I appreciate- but the
vocals were a bit whiny and indistinct for my taste. It would have helped to hear their music
beforehand, I imagine.
Next up was Kill Hannah....which may well be short for Kill Hannah, Take Her Hairspray.
These tall skinny guys had severe Cure hair, and were obviously popular with the girls as they
intially got more screams than SMG. If being popular with the girls wasn't enough, you'd swear
that at least the lead singer WAS a girl. Close your eyes, and listen to this guy sing....this is no falsetto we're dealing with here. I have never heard a male voice before that could so easily
pass for a woman's.
They were very pop/rock, and they were good at the pop aspect, but there wasn't much
memorable outside of the vague androgeny coming from the vocalist. I was and still am puzzled
by the fact that their name has a hard edge to it, and so did their T shirts in the merch booth
which featured a plane dropping a bomb on one side and "Welcome to Chicago, Mother
&$*?!cker!" on the other. The angst that I expected was totally absent from the performance.
Chris Randall made an apt comment using the word "panties" and "Kill Hannah" in the same
sentence. I found it very amusing.