 The very heavy power trio was born when SHORTY and LEO enlisted SPOOKY, bass player and second vocalist. Adored by a myriad of loyal fans all over the world, and loathed by just as many scathing critics, who more often than not compared them to a continental poor man..s MOTORHEAD, KILLER became without doubt one of Belgium..s all-time most successful rock music export products. Although they liked and respected LEMMY..S outfit, KILLER were actually more enthused by SAXON, IRON MAIDEN and other pioneers of the NWOBHM, but being an extremely loud trio, and with their trademark growling vocal delivery, they never wholly escaped the comparison until latter days when they reinvented themselves as a quartet. KILLER actually always took it more as a compliment then an insult, MOTORHEAD being another one of those rare surviving dinosaurs that still excite fans galore, while lesser bands as well as large numbers of so-called rock-music-journalists are long extinct.
The release of their first two albums: READY FOR HELL and WALL OF SOUND .. the second recorded with new drummer ROBERT ..DOUBLE BEAR.. COGEN - literally turned KILLER into a heavy-metal-household-name. Their MAUSOLEUM label mates OSTROGOTH and CROSSFIRE enjoyed comparable success of a global magnitude, and for a while fans in Japan even thought that NWOBHM stood for NEW WAVE OF BELGIAN HEAVY METAL .. we kid you not! In those days KILLER were innovators, playing melodic speed-metal long before bands like METALLICA rode it to the ultimate pinnacle of success.
The third album, SHOCK WAVES, proved immensely successful as this time around both friend and foe unanimously lauded the album as a very-heavy-metal-masterpiece. On the back of it..s release the band played prestigious festivals, toured the whole of Europe, and sold albums from Tokyo to Rio De Janeiro and from Moscow to New York, and just about everywhere in between.
After that KILLER was ready, willing and able to have their imposing live sound captured for release on a double live album to be called STILL ALIVE IN EIGHTY-FIVE! A live performance of audacious magnitude was recorded by the DIETER DIERKS mobile recording unit at a one-night-only sold-out show at the HOF TER LO hall in Antwerp. During the encore over a hundred elated fans were on stage with the band, joining in on the rhythmic refrains. Additional sessions were booked at ICP studios In Brussels for JOS KLOEK to mix the recordings. By that time though the parent company of the MAUSOLEUM RECORDS label had encountered insurmountable financial difficulties. The label couldn..t pay the studio in order to finish the mixes. So in the end only four tracks were ever mixed, and over the years the multi-tracks went missing. Fortunately SHORTY still possessed a master-tape copy of those four completed tracks and these exciting versions of SHOCK WAVES, SCARECROW, IN THE NAME OF THE LAW and KLEPTOMANIA were finally made available to the fans in April of 2002, as bonus tracks on the reissued version of the SHOCKWAVES album, part of the re-issue series then commemorating MAUSOLEUM..S 20th anniversary.
In spite of the failure of their record label KILLER soldiered on and experienced one more climax before going into deliberate if transitory retirement; the invasion of Poland in 1986, where .. every night - they played for captive audiences numbering no less than 10.000 eager fans.
By 1990 the MAUSOLEUM label had made a comeback, and so had KILLER. A year earlier SHORTY and SPOOKY had recruited new drummer RUDY SIMMONS and added JAN VAN SPRINGEL as a second guitar player to the line-up. KILLER..S fourth album, FATAL ATTRACTION, was the first release on the second coming of MAUSOLEUM, and sold well.
By 1991 though the MAUSOLEUM management team spent more time battling each other than running the record company, and in the meantime Grunge music ruled the airwaves. Disgusted - though for different reasons - both KILLER and ALFIE FALCKENBACH, the original founder of the label, once more packed it in, more or less simultaneously.
Later that year SHORTY as VAN CAMP (well it is his real name after all) released a solo album entitled TOO WILD TO TAME on the CNR label. The album sounded as if it could have been KILLER, volume IV, except that PAUL really got all those extra-long ..look how good I am.. guitar-hero solos out of his system. The album was never widely available outside the Benelux countries so it was a treat for KILLER aficionados around the world when no less than four selections from the VAN CAMP album were also included as bonus tracks on the 2002 re-issue of FATAL ATTRACTION.
Whenever ALFIE FALCKENBACH jumpstarts the MAUSOLEUM label again, a new KILLER album can..t be far behind. When the label was revived in April 2002, on the occasion of it..s 20th anniversary, FALCKENBACH first of all prepared the re-issue all the KILLER albums on compact disc.
With the inclusion of bonus tracks and usage of the original artwork for the booklet covers, all the re-releases also featured elaborate full color 8-page booklets, crammed with rare photographs, and detailed biographies and liner notes. The reformed KILLER, joined on stage by 80s label mate DORO, then headlined the sold-out MAUSOLEUM 20th ANNIVERSARY CONCERT at the BIEBOB Club in Vosselaar, Belgium. The overwhelming success was a shot in the arm and decisive and motivating factor for the band to stick together, write new material, and ultimately break a decade of silence with the recording of the brand-spanking-new album: BROKEN SILENCE.
Released in May 2003, BROKEN SILENCE, the band..s 5th album, their first since 1991, though with a renewed line-up in attendance, carried on in the classic tradition of WALL OF SOUND and SHOCK WAVES, featuring anthem-like songs. Innovation was introduced by the addition of keyboards .. actually a lot of them! This overdose of keyboards, together with a somewhat weak production, was the reason that the album was good, but failed to achieve the greatness it had aimed for. Some fans, especially in Germany .. who also came to see the band play live at the HEADBANGERS OPEN AIR and KEEP IT TRUE festivals .. were disappointed.
KILLER was determined not to make the same mistakes twice. The new repertoire would still feature keyboards, but relegated to the background, and with a sound fashioned after the great bands of the 70s like DEEP PURPLE, RAINBOW, and URIAH HEAP. It was decided to record the new album in Germany, and the young KRISTIAN ..KOHLE.. KOHLMANNSLEHNER was recruited to produce it at his KOHLEKELLER STUDIO in Seeheim. His only instructions were to make sure that SHORTY..S un-matched trademark guitar sound regained the prominence it deserved, and dominate the album..s overall sound. And so, during those cold winter months of January and February 2005, KILLER recorded a scorching album, on which the blistering guitar work continuously decorates the hymn-like songs. Both KIILLER and MAUSOLEUM believe we got it right this time, and that IMMORTAL will become..huh, well IMMORTAL!
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