My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult ‎- Some Have To Dance... Some Have To Kill

Before industrial music found its way into arenas and alternative radio, Thrill Kill Kult were making records that sounded like they belonged in a sleazy nightclub at the end of the world.

Released in 1988 on Chicago’s legendary Wax Trax! Records, Some Have To Dance... Some Have To Kill captures My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult during their formative period, when Groovie Mann and Buzz McCoy were developing their unmistakable collision of industrial electronics, dance music, camp, horror, and deliberate provocation.

The title track is quintessential early TKK: pounding programmed rhythms, repetitive synth sequences, distorted vocals, and dialogue samples assembled into something hypnotic and unapologetically physical. Rather than embracing the severe, mechanical atmosphere associated with much of industrial music, Thrill Kill Kult injected the genre with sex, kitsch, psychedelia, and B-movie decadence. The result was music that could be menacing and funny at the same time, while remaining firmly aimed at the dancefloor.

The release belongs to the same fertile Wax Trax! scene that was redefining American industrial music in the late ’80s. Yet Thrill Kill Kult immediately stood apart. Their fascination with exploitation cinema, occult imagery, religious hysteria, and nightclub culture gave their records an identity that was unmistakably their own.

Some Have To Dance... Some Have To Kill is an essential document of that early period, when the band's aesthetic was still raw but already fully recognizable. Dirty, hypnotic, theatrical, and irresistibly danceable, it captures the sound of industrial music discovering just how much fun it could have after dark.