Description
Killing Floor is the third album by the American folk-rock/alt-country combo Vigilantes of Love fronted by singer-songwriter Bill Mallonee, released on Fingerprint Records in April 1992. The album was recorded by Mark Heard and John Keane in Athens, Georgia, in about ten days during January of 1992. Half of the tunes were recorded at Mark Maxwell’s studio and half at John Keane’s studio. Mixed by Heard at his studio Fingerprint in Los Angeles. Produced by Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Mark Heard, with Vigilantes of Love.
At a time when most artists were attemting to combine punk with noise pop, Vigilantes of Love took a different approach. On this remarkable album, the band injects the fiery energy of punk into echoes of lost southern folk music, not unlike producer Heard’s Dry Bones Dance before it, and the resulting concoction is frightening and beautiful. Lyrically, these songs hang their toes over the edge of depression and despair, but a perfect moment of grace and redemption always keeps the album from plunging over. “Sick of It All”, “Motel Room”, and “Keep Out the Chill” perfectly capture the hopelessness most people feel at some point during life, while the best songs here, including “Earth Has No Sorrow” and “River of Love”, shine with a unexpected grace and hope.
The first edition of Killing Floor was released in 1992 before Mark Heard succumbed to two fatal heart attacks. After Heard’s death, Fingerprint Records changed the artwork to include a tribute on the inside cover. The two versions of Killing Floor have the same song sequence and features three bonus tracks recorded live at New York’s CBGB on April 7, 1993. The second version was remastered, and there are slight variances in the artwork.
Producers Mark Heard and Peter Buck of R.E.M. seem to be trying to get the biggest, most aggressive sound they can while using acoustic string instruments almost exclusively. The result is a terrific set of Power Folk. The Vigilantes rip through the fast numbers with punk intensity, and perform the slower ones with an almost cinematic sweep. Singer-songwriter Bill Mallonee’s stories echo Flannery O’Connor in their colloquial evocation of empty lives and gracious redemption. His only bandmate is mandolin virtuoso Billy Holmes, who also plays organ, piano, sitar, trumpet, bass and electric guitar. In the last years before his death Heard had developed uncanny prowess in engineering acoustic recordings, and every note rings with shimmering definition. [Darryl Cater, AMG]
Bill Mallonee, the vocal and songwriting heart of Vigilantes of Love, might be condsidered the latest in a long line of “new Dylans,” stretching back to guys like John Prine and Steve Forbert, to Loudon Wainwright III and Bruce Springsteen, and most recently, Elvis Costello and John Wesley Harding. Though his gift for wordplay (and frequent over-wordiness) borrows liberally from Dylan, and his satirical wit resembles that of Costello and Harding, Mallonee is no copycat. There’s a passion and zeal to his performance that’s very individual and a sense of mortality and social responsibility that lack any judgmental attitude; his broadsides are as often as not self-directed.
With 16 tracks clocking in at 60 minutes, it’s difficult to pick favorites; there’s hardly any duds and several great tunes. The album’s opening line (from «Real Down Town») – “Hey look at me now / I’ve been impaled on the horns of your sacred cow” – seems to indicate where Mallonee feels he fits (or misfits) with the Christian music industry; the following verse, where he sings of “the butcher down the street/ He’s gonna sell you some meat market music, cut, dried and cheap” would seem to confirm his opinion of most of what we call “product”. But as Mallonee is quick to exclaim on «Undertow», “I’m gonna rip out your heart, I’m gonna sew it on my sleeve/ I’m gonna preach the gospel on the corner of the street.”
Mallonee certainly has his tender side, as he displays on several tunes. «River of Love» finds the artist ready to “shed his skin and jump right in to this River of Love;” «I Can’t Remember» is the heart-wrenching story of a train wreck that costs the singer a dear friend. As he lays in a snowbank next to his dying companion, he sees Jesus “brush away the snowflakes and bestow on you a kiss/ He gathered you up in his arms, God you looked so fine / That white dress you were wearin’ darlin’ like a million stars did shine.”
Another of Mallonee’s more reflective moments come on the Civil War tale, «Andersonville», which takes the form of a young soldier writing to his sweetheart about the horrors he’s forced to encounter; he pleas for her prayers as he writes “Hope is just a luxury you learn not to count on … Oh Hannah, may you never see the sights that I have seen …” But mostly Mallonee reels off acoustic-based rave-ups which find him longing for the «Sweet Fire of Love» and inviting us to join him aboard the «Hip Train», as he admits he “Ain’t no saint, ain’t no prophet, ain’t no angel, ask my wife about it.”
Mallonee primarily bangs on acoustic guitar and drums while the rest of the musical bedrock is provided by his longtime associate Billy Holmes, who plays everything from mandolin to organ to trumpet to sitar. The whole affair was nicely coordinated by Peter Buck of R.E.M. and (the late) Mark Heard, who took care not to sand off the rough edges. [Bruce A. Brown, CCM, July 1993]
This is for those of you who passionately hate anything with faith behind it that presumes to call itself “cutting edge” but actually is an inept rehash of what happened five years ago. If you like Mark Heard, R.E.M., and frenetic mandolin playing, you’ll dig this solid effort from V.O.L.
‘Killing Floor’s neo-sixties sound includes ukulele, sitar (mmm, tasty!), upright bass, accordion, blues-harp, and (gasp!) rhythmically complex drumming. In other words, this is not the usual fluffy ccm drivel that we all know and love (?) so well. This album is brutally honest in its well-crafted, Dylanesque lyrics; excellent in its musicianship; and refreshingly risk-taking in its production (by V.O.L., the late Mark Heard, and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck).
V.O.L.’s singer, Bill Mallonee, has written provocative, sometimes earthy lines that lament misspent youth and spiritual death/sexual idolatry: “Scuttle this ship of proud notions and the years of blindly groping,” abandon worthless “therapeutic lingo,” and struggle instead to find God, ‘Killing Floor’ is about the searing pain of pre-birth; it hits in ways that hurt, but are worthwhile – they remind me where I’ve been.
Although Mallonee strays dangerously close to morbid introspection at times and uses an unnecessary expletive, I welcome his soul-searching, witty commentary about life. Though coming from an apparently non-Christian background, Mallonee has definitely grown into a God-given confession of his need to “jump right into this River of Love.” For him, “earth has no sorrow heaven can’t heal.” This album is fun, but not easy. It’s often disturbing – but ultimately for the right reasons. You can get it by writing to Fingerprint Records, P.O. Box 834, Montrose, CA 91021. [Michael Anderson, Cornerstone Magazine, Vol. 21, Issue 100, 1993]
CD tracklist:
01. Real Down Town – 3:53
02. Undertow – 3:03
03. River of Love – 2:59
04. Anybody’s Guess – 3:12
05. I Can’t Remember – 5:10
06. Motel Room – 3:20
07. Deep End – 2:43
08. Sick of It All – 3:51
09. Sweet Fire of Love – 2:13
10. Hip Train – 3:27
11. Earth Has No Sorrow – 4:29
12. Port of Entry – 3:55
13. Eleanor – 5:42
14. Keep Out The Chill – 3:45
15. Andersonville – 3:45
16. Strike While the Iron Is Hot – 3:52
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette and CD. A remastered version was released by Fingerprint Records in 1993 with three bonus tracks (recorded live at CBGBs, April 7, 1993); “Earth Has No Sorrow”, “Undertow”, and “Odious”. A 1997 re-release includes 4 bonus tracks: the same three live recordings, as well as a stripped back studio demo of a song from Welcome to Struggleville, “Cold Ground.” Re-issued on vinyl for the first time in November 2018, as a 180-gram vinyl double LP housed in a gatefold sleeve (featuring new cover artwork by Kreg Yingst).
Available at Bandcamp: https://billmalloneemusic.bandcamp.com/album/killing-floor-1992
Killing Floor, vinyl edition cover artwork, independent 2018
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