The Love Kills Theory

The Love Kills Theory - Happy Suicide Jim
- The Love Kills Theory’s album, Happy Suicide Jim, is a mish-mash of experimental music made with random samplings of different noises with socially conscious lyrics. The way the band synths themselves out, makes it seem like a robot sat in the studio to make the album instead of real live mortals. The Beastie Boys song, “Intergalactic,” immediately springs to mind when listening to The Love Kills Theory.

The band, who, according to their website, are more like a manifesto, immediately establish their social standing in Happy Suicide Jim’s first track called “Authenticity”: “I could never change all the things we do, I’ve become aware watching things accrue...All the lies just blow our minds, separate, sinuate, apathy prevails.” Clearly, the song speaks to the generation who, in their opinion, is too apathetic to know what is going on in the world and Love Kills’ desire to change that mind-set.

“We forge the core of what’s unreal and advertise its broad appeal. Communication is cliched and confirms a choice already made,” Cevin Soling sings in “Region of the Worms.” Perhaps Love Kills Theory is talking about the bombardment of advertisements we are faced with and how most of it is not needed, but we consume it in gluttony anyway.

For “The Poverty of Student Life,” they sing about the American school system that shoves ideas down college students’ throats. They claim it’s a way to establish control over people to mold them into what society wants.

Happy Suicide Jim is worth a listen. It appears as a fun and mindless album until one opens up its ears to The Love Kills Theory’s message.

Reviewer: Courtney Thompson - The Celebrity Cafe

I have a riddle for you. What do you get when you cross the more commercial efforts of the Butthole Surfers with the saner elements of Frank Zappa and Mothers of Invention?

Give up?

Why, Love Kills Theory, of course. Now, you might not think that those two musical endeavors would mix too well, but if anyone can make it work, it's Love Kills Theory impresario Cevin Soling. Soling grew up listening to the MC 5, the Residents, Jim Carroll, and various artists experimenting with electronic vocals. Soling has cultivated the roots of his musical foundation into a creative brew on his debut, Happy Suicide Jim.

Soling is something of an eccentric renaissance man, releasing music, self-published children’s books, and film documentaries. On Happy Suicide Jim, Soling contributes ample guitar licks and robotic electronically enhanced vocals. He is backed by Bill Brandau on keyboards, Jim Minics on guitar, Darren Pilato on bass and Jason Stewart on drums. Throughout Happy Suicide Jim, Soling and his ensemble dredge up sounds akin to some of the Surfer’s later work, including Hairway to Steven and Electric Larryland. But where the Surfers are mostly an acid-tinged comedy act, Love Kills Theory explores some dark domains on Happy Suicide Jim.

Sometimes, the lyrics are a bit remote, especially on “Region of the Worms”, where Soling’s metaphors wander into an almost science fiction-like landscape. But, after all, the album purposely dangles on the edge on insanity, so cryptic poetry should be piece of this shattered jigsaw puzzle of an album.

As interesting as Happy Suicide Jim is, its main fault lies in Soling’s contradictory infatuation with edginess. At times, the music happily teeters into uncharted territory, much like a tipsy gazelle prancing in a field of lions. But other times, the group only scratches the surface, playing it safe staying within the boundaries established by Soling’s musical mentors. This makes Happy Suicide Jim a bit of an uneven ride. It would be nice to hear Soling use the music he adores as a launching pad for expression rather than an altar to worship at.

Despite its occasional faults, Happy Suicide Jim is just lunatic enough to keep your interest up. Soling and Minics interchange chunky chords, ably assisted by the sonic IED blasts of Pilato’s and Stewart’s rhythm section. Brandau’s keyboards add some loopy effects, making the whole project a fine alternative to the bland pop currently dominating the Billboard charts.

And if you haven’t figured it out already, don’t even bother with this album if you’re worried whether or not Brittney is putting out another album, or if Jason is going to do more duets with Scarlet. But if you’re thirsting for a sip of the absurd, Happy Suicide Jim is the album for you. It won’t make you cream your pants with its originality, but it's still better than seventy-five percent of the crap out there in musicland.
- Blogcritics Magazine

Mixing Bohemia and eclectic rock sounds, The Love Kills Theory’s newest release is quite intriguing. “Authenticity” starts off a little rough, especially vocally, but smooots out soon as the album carries you on a 13-song journey.

Not just your run of the mill rock band, “The Love Kills Theory” has a guitar sound fighting to keep its ferocity in check. Interesting vocal styles remind me at time of some of the best garage rock bands of the late Seventies as well as slightly reminding me of the late Eighties group, The Godfathers (“Birth, School, Work, Death”).

Happy Suicide Jim is as welcome break and goes against the grain of rock either being produced to be heard on Clear Channel and indie music which is strictly for internet radio.

With lyrics that feature a true social conscious and smartly styled music and meolides, Happy Suicide Jim is worth picking up on.
- Enigma

The Love Kills Theory is an artistic attempt to bring contemporary philosophy into the mainstream where it can be accessible and relevent. Influenced by various writers and philosophers such as Aldous Huxley (author of Brave New World and Yellow Chrome) and Guy Debord (Founder of the Situationalist International) amongst others, the guys of The Love Kills Theory is anything but overproduced mainstream clueless.
As their name implies, The Love Kills Theory is as much a manifesto as a band. Pioneering where the Situationalist left off, they continue the struggle against the destruction of art in popular culture.
Society has reached a point in its development where the pursuit of the things we love is killing us by making us all soulless consumers. If art can't be resurrected then, atleast the reasons for its demise will be documented in these songs. - John Shelton Ivany Top 21

An Exclusive Interview With The Band, The Love Kills Theory!!!
Category: MySpace


An Interview With Cevin Soling of The Love Kills Theory

1) How did the members of The Love Kills Theory meet and how was the name of the band decided upon?





I had written a lot of songs after my last band had broken up. I contacted all the best musicians I had ever played with or was friendly with. Bill Brandau and I played in The Neanderthal Spongecake and was an obvious choice. He's played piano ever since he was three or four and we completely click in the studio even if he did run at me with a chainsaw once. Darren Pilato has the most impressive knowledge of the fundamentals of bass of anyone I have ever met. He is also the son of journalist and manager Bruce Pilato, who is also a very close friend. The inclusion of Jaron Stewart is an interesting story. I had been producing a compilation album called, "When Pigs Fly" and the Oak Ridge Boys were one of the bands on the album. The wife of their manager is a Native American medicine woman and also a well known artist in her own right. She had invited me to Oklahoma to participate in a ceremony called The Long Dance and Jaron also happened to be there and drummed at the ceremony. We hung out a bit afterwards and I got to hear more of his playing and asked him to join. Jim Minics was playing in a band that I happened to see. He stood out to such a degree both in his playing and stage presence that we stayed in touch.






The band name was largely inspired by author Neil Postman's summation of "Brave New World." Contrary to Orwell's vision of the future being a world where we are subjugated by all we fear and resent, Postman claims we exist in the Huxley nightmare of a world where we are destroyed by the things we love. Essentially, our culture has become trivial due to its preoccupation with television, the internet, sex, celebrity, etc. We live in an era of "tyranny of the self" due to its appetite for distraction. Marcuse also discusses this in The One-Dimensional Man. The Love Kills Theory emerges literally from this, but also owes itself to the Situationists, the psychological-biological study on the evolution of despair, and illuminations of the varieties of alienation from Marx and the ..:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />Frankfurt School.






2) What musical artists have been most influential on the Love Kills Theory sound?






There are a lot of artists that I love and respect, but largely that is because I don't compose the way they do. I think 1960's garage rock is a big influence along with punk and new wave. It's impossible to really nail down a list. We don't consciously try to sound like anyone, but at the same time we're influenced by everything we hear.






3) If you had to choose one, what song in the Love Kills Theory repertoire holds the most personal meaning to the band?






Well, I can't speak for everyone else. I think it might vary on the day and mood. "This Thing" was certainly the first song where I felt I had hit upon something personally meaningful, but it is also the oldest song on the album.






4) For those who may not know, please explain the philosophy of the Situationist and how the Love Kills Theory evolves from this ideology.






There's a story about someone asking that question at a Situationist presentation at the ICA gallery in London to which Guy Debord responded by saying, "We are not here to answer cuntish questions," and then stormed out of the building. I can't sum up the philosophy in a few short sentences, but it deals with mediating art and politics in a way that they cease to be abstractions, but are instead immediately lived. Well, OK, maybe I did sort of sum it up. We pick up on the various critiques of contemporary society such as Debord's "Society of the Spectacle," and the concept of detournement and recuperation whereby acts of rebellion become packaged and sold as commodities.






5) How was the name "Happy Suicide Jim" decided as the title of your CD recording and what message would you most like to impart to the listeners of this recording?






The image of the cake on the album cover was supposed to indicate that before the mass murder/suicide at Jonestown, there was a big party. Instead of Happy Birthday, the cake reads Happy Suicide since that is the event they are celebrating. Basically the concept is about celebrating self destruction, which I see is a metaphor for our culture.






6) In addition to your music in which you sing vocals and play guitar, Mr. Soling, you are a film director and producer with several projects under your belt. What creative differences can be found in the way you create music versus the way you tackle a film production?






They are largely different beasts, but in many of the songs I use cinematic sound effects to tell a story viscerally. I think the - The MySpace Interview