Starkill are Grown-Ups Now: New and Improved Formula on “Breaking the Madness”

Guitarist Parker Jameson and drummer Spencer Weidner have accomplished a helluva lot for a 24-year-old and a 20-year-old, respectively. In 2011 they surfaced as Massakren, a spikey armband-wearing symphonic metal band, and self-released an EP. How this all happened so quickly isn’t quite clear, but a hasty sequence of events soon saw them drop the embarrassing outfits, alter their sound to a more focused melodeath approach, sign with Century Media and change their name to Starkill. Fires of Life, their 2013 Century debut was adequate but not especially noteworthy; the dudes are fantastic players, that much is clear, but their limited years on earth showed in their well-worn approach to songcraft.

Starkill will release sophomore album Virus of the Mind on October 14th, and they’ve just put out “Breaking the Madness,” the first track we’re hearing from that album. The track feels like a clear evolution for Starkill; yes, it’s still very much in the vein of the band’s heroes — Arch Enemy (with whom they’re about to tour), Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, basically anything that came from Sweden between 1996 and 2006 — but there’s a distinctly more unique stamp on it, the kind that only comes with the wisdom of age (though still as young as they are). Starkill aren’t going to reinvent the wheel, but I doubt they’re really trying to so much as they are to just make really solid melodeath that takes what their influences have done and modernizes it a bit.

Here’s “Breaking the Madness.” Virus of the Mind comes out on October 14th, but for some reason there isn’t a pre-order link available yet… sorry. Catch ’em on tour with Arch Enemy and Kreator this fall.