ELEKTRIKILL

New Jersey-based electro-industrial project, Elektrikill has been quickly earning a name for themseves with the acclaimed debut album, Monsters. They've already released the follow-up album, Propaganarchy! which continues the band's quick progress. We're happy they've agreed to do this interview for us.

Thanks for taking time to do this interview for us. You just released a new album, ‘Propaganarchy!”. What can you tell us about this and the meaning behind the title?

I wanted to go harder with this album than I did with Monsters. I had been doing film scores for a while and that influence really crept into the music on Monsters. So, this album was a conscious decision to move away from that sound to a more classic industrial sound with a modern update. I really wanted to go much heavier and more experimental. The title was inspired by the cover art. I knew I wanted to do an album cover that was an homage to the early Foetus album covers. The title, which is an amalgam of the words “propaganda” and “anarchy” is a call to

fight disinformation.

The new album arrives rather quickly after the debut, “Monsters”. What do you think you attribute that to?

Monsters took FOREVER to write and record. The main reason for that is more than half of the album were songs from my defunct industrial-metal band. So, I had all these songs I’d written that I was used to hearing with guitar parts that suddenly didn’t have any guitars anymore. It took me a really long time to give them an all-synth vibe that worked. With Propaganarchy!, these were all brand- new songs that could just be what they were going to be from the get-go. Once it was finished, I really just wanted to get it out there. I wasn’t going to wait until April to put it out so a full year had passed between albums.

Is the new album based upon a central “story”? Or are the songs smaller stories in and of themselves?

The album is more political than the last one but there are really only three songs that have any kind of a political lean to them- "Propaganarchy!", "Moral Combat" and "Execration". I don’t really write personal songs so it’s rare that a song is directly about me. I like to write songs that are stories. "Wrong Again" is about the victim of a gang execution realizing that he’s not getting out of it. "Hidden Drives" is about the nouveau riche. The song topics are kind of all over the place.

You had a video recently that did really well within a relatively short amount of time. Did you do any sort of promotion or advertising that may have contributed to the result?

I always blow up the Facebook industrial groups with a link to my latest video but was honestly shocked when I got 400 views overnight. Once that happened, I invested a tiny – and I mean tiny – amount of money into YouTube advertising that was supposed to guarantee me another 500-750 views. I thought that if I was lucky I’d end up with about 1,000 views on it. I couldn’t believe it went viral like it did!

Did you record all of the songs that you wrote during the current session or were there any left out?

That’s all of them. At first, "Mask" wasn’t really coming out the way I wanted it to so that one almost got left off. But I ended up giving it a secon chance and it’s probably my favorite track on the album. "Wrong Again" was a song that got left off of Monsters because I felt like the album already had enough songs with that vibe. I’m glad I did that because the version of "Wrong Again" on this album turned out much better.

Are there any artists that you collaborate with or that you’d like to?

On Monsters I sort of collaborated with Rocco Kult from Cryoflesh because he played me a song he’d done and I really loved the drums. I told him I was stealing the drum track but I would give him co-writer credit. That drum track led to "Everything Looks Better On Fire". Rocco is in the video with me. I’d love to collaborate with Ogre from Skinny Puppy but he doesn’t really collab on outside projects. I’d love to do something with Gary Numan too.

What’s your feeling regarding the use of AI in videos these days. Has it already gotten out of control and maybe reduced the organic element of creating content?

It’s already out of control. I think it was a fun fad for about a minute and then it started to get dangerous. AI is already eating itself too – originally it based what it was doing on things humans created. Now it’s basing what it’s doing on things humans and other AI are creating. That will hopefully be its downfall – its own nability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.

What do you have planned for the coming months in 2024?

Later in the year, I’m planning to release a compilation album of some of the music I’ve done for film and television soundtracks over the years. It’s going to be called, (Mysterious Music) (Camera Shutter Clicking). I’m also already working on the follow-up to Propaganarchy! which will be called The Scream. The title song is already written and partially recorded. I’m also going to be returning to live shows starting with Wicked World’s Fair in February.

Thanks for your time today. Any parting words are yours.

Thank you for the interview!

William ZIMMERMAN
16/02/2024