The Strangulators! aren’t interested in making punk rock polite. Their approach is considerably rougher: drag it through a dark alley, leave it bruised, and force it to sing for its supper. With Kill Kill Charity Kill, the band return with a second album that pushes their collision of aggressive punk and vintage crime noir further into the shadows, where murder, sleaze, and dangerous characters lurk behind every line.
Following their 2024 release, You Can’t Unmurder Someone, the new record continues a distinctive songwriting concept built around the language of 1950s and 1960s pulp-fiction paperbacks. Rather than relying on conventional autobiographical lyrics, songwriter Joel MacAskill mines these forgotten corners of crime literature for phrases, expressions, and stories that carry their own atmosphere. The result is a lyrical world steeped in hard-boiled storytelling, seedy encounters, and the lurid vocabulary of vintage noir.
MacAskill describes discovering the books as finding a seemingly endless supply of words and ideas. He selects titles that catch his attention, pulls out striking phrases, and reshapes them into songs. There is, however, one rule guiding his approach: the women in these stories become the heroines, and they ultimately emerge as the victors. It’s an intriguing twist on a genre often defined by its dangerous men and troubled women, giving the material a different sense of agency without sacrificing its gritty character.
Musically, Kill Kill Charity Kill retains the aggression of its predecessor while leaning further into noir. That combination is the album’s defining appeal. Punk supplies the force and attitude, while the crime-fiction influence brings a darker narrative sensibility. MacAskill even found himself learning jazz guitar chords to accommodate the shift, suggesting that the project’s evolution extends beyond its lyrical references. The band aren’t abandoning their punk foundations; they’re finding new ways to make them serve a more shadowy, cinematic vision.
https://thestrangulators.bandcamp.com/album/kill-kill-charity-kill
The album was recorded entirely in San Diego at Earthling Studios, with engineer Mike Kamoo overseeing the sessions and contributing drums. The new recording location also reflects the current West Coast chapter of a project formed in Burlington, Vermont, in 2024. The Strangulators! have since established a San Diego base, carrying their abrasive sensibility into a different setting without losing the identity that shaped their earlier work.
Kill Kill Charity Kill promises an unapologetically grim alternative to polished, predictable rock: a record where pulp-fiction sleaze meets punk-rock urgency, and where the stories are as important as the noise surrounding them. For listeners drawn to music with a taste for the strange, the sinister, and the gloriously disreputable, The Strangulators! are building a world worth stepping into—provided you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.
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