Killing Floor CD - Import

Limited edition German reissue of this 1970 album by the British Blues/Rock outfit comes housed in a digi-sleeve replicating the album's original release and also features a fold out poster. Repertoire.

Killing Floor: Christian Void (vocals, samples); Marc Phillips (guitar, bass, background vocals); John Belew (synthesizer, programming, samples); Karl Tellefsen (bass, guitar); James Basore (drums, electronic percussion).
Additional personnel: Blackstone, Jazzy Jimmy Lyons (scratches).
Engineers: Jimmy Lyons (tracks 1-5, 7-8); Bart Thurber (tracks 6, 9); C. Chriss (track 10).
Recorded at Razor's Edge Recording and Drug #6, San Francisco, California and House Of Faith, Palo Alto, California.
All songs written by Killing Floor.
The sheer toughness -- and overall derivative -- nature of Killing Floor's debut album, issued six months after Led Zeppelin's debut in 1969 on the Spark label, is a wondrous contrast to the overly slick treatment American blues were given by British artists. All of these tunes, with the exception of one, are revamped versions of songs from the blues canon with different words. The lone "cover" in the set was written by Willie Dixon titled "Woman You Need Love," the tune Zep ripped for "Whole Lotta Love." Despite the fact that this set was issued before by Repertoire, the Akarma version is definitive in that it features the original cover artwork in a heavy cardboard gatefold sleeve, and killer sound. This is a raw, immediate, overdriven, psychedelic blues record that offers an interesting historical counterpoint to the immediate impact of Page and Plant and Co., but it also offers a great contrast to the recent 1990s versions of American groups trying to rock up the blues in like style: Jon Spencer Blues Explosion immediately comes to mind. They also provide a heavier, less reverent, and altogether heavier update of the Yardbirds rave-up sound~ Thom Jurek
Listening to Killing Floor's debut LP today -- essentially rearranged Chicago blues songs given a bombastic heavy rock treatment -- you cannot dismiss the impact and influence of Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut, which was released six months earlier, in January 1969. The band's fledgling label, Spark, decided to them record "original" material during sessions in Pye Recording Studios, so vocalist Bill Thorndycraft reportedly spent several days thereafter in the studio's restroom, where he reluctantly rewrote all the group's lyrics. The only song that didn't end up as an "original" was their cover of Willie Dixon's "You Need Love" (retitled "Woman You Need Love"), the same song later purloined by Led Zeppelin for "Whole Lotta Love." The next track, "Nobody By My Side," repeats the same two-line riff from Zeppelin's "How Many More Times," which had been purloined by Zeppelin from Albert King's "The Hunter." "Come Home Baby," a honky tonk blues original, features pleasant ivory-tickling by Lou Martin (this song was later covered by bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon on Spoonful of Blues). The hymn-like "Sunday Morning" features Martin on harpsichord. Much of the rest of the album continues along in the same fashion. There are the occasional sloppy mistakes, both in the playing and the album's production, but, all in all, Killing Floor is a fine collection of B-level British blues-rock. The cover artwork -- a photo depicting jail cell doors with symbolic red ink splashed around like blood -- was changed for the original American release on Sire. Killing Floor was reissued on CD by See For Miles (retitled Rock the Blues) in 1992 and by Repertoire in 1993. ~ Bryan Thomas
Killing Floor doesn't revolutionize guitar-based industrial rock on this debut album, but the group still sounds good -- even on a cover of Motorhead's "Ace of Spades." ~ John Bush