Kill Your Romeo

Kill Your Romeo

Kill Your Romeo will kill your thirst for gripping, original music. This band blends post-hardcore indie defiance with pop-friendly accessibility, energy with melody, to craft a sound that is bristling with electricity and charming with its songwriting sensibilities. Standing as the natural convergence of the direction of music, drawing on its history and moving ahead as the next step of artistic evolution, Kill Your Romeo has arrived – with a vengeance.

Personal

For Kill Your Romeo, making great music means making it personal. This band draws from the innermost truths within the members’ souls and psyches to create songs that are deeply personal yet able to reach out to people with messages the audience can understand. “It needs to draw on personal feelings and thoughts,” says Mike Sullivan of Kill Your Romeo. The irony is that by finding the most individual voice inside one’s self, one is tapping into a universal vibe to which everybody can relate. This is a truth demonstrated with clarity and musical accomplishment in the music of Kill Your Romeo. “To relate to your music is to not be the only one who feels the way that you do,” Sullivan declares.

Journey

“It’s a CD based on a personal journey,” Sullivan says of the new album “Pleasant Point.” And by “personal journey,” Sullivan means the steps of one who follows his own path rather than succumbs to mediocrity. “I do find some distaste in people feeling the need to bend and form into what everyone else is,” he says. “This isn’t me saying, ‘Hey, be completely off-the-wall for attention, but be what you feel is right.’” The album draws on a number of conceptual sources to share its message of individuality and it’s a CD that will truly reach the masses and teach each listener how to be him- or herself within that mass.

The Artist at Work

Kill Your Romeo prides itself on writing and performing tight music. The group put much effort into the songs on their new album, honing them to near perfection before even hitting the studio. “We had much of the album written and rehearsed before we went in to record, with minimal changes in the studio.” The group is set to perform with Four Years Strong of Surrender Records in June. A tour is in the works for the summer, as well. Kill Your Romeo is working with A&R Select, the leading A&R firm in Hollywood, CA.

Review

“Kill Your Romeo is killing more than Romeos. This band has skewered the spirit of blasé mainstream musical boredom.” – A&R Select
- A&R Selects

INTERVIEW W/ KILL YOUR ROMEO


HI I'M CYNTHIA FROM TASTE IT T.V. BRINGING YOU AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH "KILL YOUR ROMEO". THIS IS AN ONLINE/WRITTEN INTERVIEW WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BAND AND THEIR RECENTLY RELEASED ALBUM "PLEASANT POINT".


LET'S ROCK THIS INTERVIEW!


(CynthiaTasteitTV) - OKAY, FIRST QUESTIONS ARE ALWAYS THE MOST MONOTONOUS. *SMILES*

(TiTV) - WHAT ARE THE BAND MEMBER'S NAMES AND WHAT DO YOU PLAY RESPECTIVELY?



(Kill Your Romeo): (MS)-Well we have 5 members currently, Ryan Hoffman and River Wagner play guitar. Brandon Wood is our drummer. Mike DeFillippis plays bass. And me, Mike Sullivan, I sing.

(TiTV) - HOW LONG HAVE YOU ALL BEEN A BAND AND WHERE ARE YOU FROM?


(KYR-MS) - We started back in October of 05' and played our first show that January. So its been a fun 2 years or so playing all the shows we can. We all are from the Mantua/Mullica Hill area here in good old ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />..:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />South Jersey.

(TiTV) - DID YOU KNOW EACH OTHER BEFORE THE BAND?



(KYR-MS) - I Was good friends with Mike DeFillippis growing up and approached him to try to start a band, he knew I never even picked up a microphone before so there was some hesitation but after a while of playing around with acoustic singing and whatnot we decided to look for the rest of the members. All the other members were from our school so we were at least familiar with them, Mike D. more then me. So we managed to talk to Ryan, River, and Brandon and started jamming in Brandon's basement. From then, we started progressing into what we are now.

(TiTV) - WHO ARE YOUR INSPIRATIONS MUSICALLY? (PAST/PRESENT)



(KYR-MS) - That's an interesting one because we all have such diversified tastes. Much of the guitar work is inspiration from bands like Avenged Sevenfold and Thrice among others. But for the band as a whole we would say bands that we listen to like Senses Fail, Underoath, Silverstein are right up there with A7X and Thrice.

(TiTV) - THE LATEST CD IS TITLED PLEASANT POINT". IS THERE ANY SIGNIFICANCE IN THE TITLE PERSONALLY? IF NOT, HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?



(KYR-MS) - Well, we took that title off one of our tracks from the CD, but that track to me is one of our stronger songs. It speaks of people in general not knowing who they are and in turn lose their identity to their surroundings and what everyone else wants for them. This is told through the adventures of one girl who through the song truly finds herself and learns that social norms aren't always the acceptable route and knowing yourself is the best thing you can take out of life.

(TiTV) - CAN YOU BRIEFLY TELL US ABOUT THE MUSICAL PROGRESSIONS ON THIS CD?



(KYR-MS) - We really tried to infuse all our varying musical tastes into one CD, so the poppy hooks and catchy music is often coupled with a series of guitar riffs and tricky harmonics. Then we would cross to the opposite type of music and bring a more hard edged track to the table. As if you blended As I Lay Dying and Fall Out Boy and we shot out.



(TiTV) – GREAT CHOICE OF BAND MIXOLOGY!


(TiTV) - LYRICALLY THIS CD IS COMPARATIVE TO A BOTTLE OF SACCHARINED CYANIDE… SWEET YET VOLATILE. HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO PEN THESE LYRICS, AND WHERE DO THEY GENERATE FROM?


(KYR-MS) - We had much of the album written and rehearsed before we went in to record with minimal changes in the studio. Most of the songs do centralize with people just not knowing themselves. It's a CD based on personal journey. I do find some distaste in people feeling the need to bend and form into what everyone else is. This isn't me saying hey, be completely off the wall for attention, but be what you feel is right. The first two track couple together into a bigger story about the lies, smoke and mirrors of Hollywood and how it can affect someone. Then into such songs as Royalty Meets Tranquility, where it's about Adam and Eve eating from the tree and their life after watching it spiral down. We aren't striving to categorize ourselves into any type of genre but feel the need to express the music through all views including subjects having to with religion. Each character in the songs has a road to take and the choices they make are also their consequences.

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(TiTV) - THAT'S QUITE AN INTERSTING MESSAGE. I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU ON PEOPLE WHO "LOSE THEIR IDENTITY TO THEIR SURROUNDINGS." KYR SUPPORTING UNIQUENESS…I DIG IT ALREADY.

(TiTV) - WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR PROMOTING THIS ALBUM?



(KYR-MS) - We're a do it yourself band with limited resources, so there will be a lot of footwork and begging to get our CD moving. The music scene is so saturated with bands that trying to be heard gets more and more difficult. Our myspace will be our main source to progress for our CD.

(TiTV) - tasteittv.com