The Kill Devil Hills

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the United States Town, see Kill Devil Hills.

The Kill Devil Hills
Origin	Fremantle, Australia
Genre(s)	Blues-rock Country Folk
Years active	2003–present
Label(s)	Reverberation Records Shock Records Bang!
Website	Official website
Members
Brendon Humphries Steve Joines Steve Gibson Lachlan Gurr Alex Archer Justin Castley
Former members
Michael de Grussa

The Kill Devil Hills were formed in 2003 in Fremantle, Western Australia as an acoustic, country-tinged 3-piece, which slowly swelled its ranks to become a rambling 6-piece outfit.

Their sometimes rickety, sometimes dirty, frequently swampy and always intense take on country, folk, gospel blues and rock hearkening like some bawdy old Irish reel bashed out on a rusty banjo by a half-cut lumberjack, high on the music of moonshine. At times chugging along in a rockabilly howl, then turning out heart-rending ballads of loss and vengeance, The Kill Devil Hills take a rolling, merry lunge at the heart of rock 'n' roll.

The Kill Devil Hills released their debut album Heathen Songs in August 2004 and nationally in February 2005 on Reverberation Records. In the same month, The Kill Devil Hills were nominated for 6 WAMi Awards taking home "Best Blues/Roots Act" and "Best Country Music Act". Triple J picked up the album, with Heathen Songs receiving a lot of airplay on a variety of shows and then being chosen as one of Triple J's 'fresh Crop' Artists of 2005 The Kill Devil Hills have been featured on Triple J's "Like A Version", JTV and the Lonely Planet documentary series "Six Degrees" on SBS. The band were hand picked to perform at The West Coast Blues & Roots Festival [1]2005, and were a favourite at The Bridgetown Blues Festival 2005, where they played on stages with the likes of The Black Keys, The Mountain Goats, The Living End, Dallas Crane, The Mess Hall, Kim Salmon, Jebediah, The Panics and The Drones just to name a few. There was a short tour of the east coast in May 2005, winning hearts all over the country. They were then invited back to Sydney for shows in November the same year.

2006 saw the band taking time to record a new album, spending most of this year in the studio, with plans to release the new record in October. They also managed to be nominated for another 4 WAMi Awards (wining for the second year in a row - "Best Blues/Roots Act" and "Best Country Music Act"), they graced the local stage at The Big Day Out, were asked to record a live set for Triple J's 'Home and Hosed', have been invited back to The Bridgetown Blues Festival[2] and played with such legends as The Beasts of Bourbon and The Dirty Three.

The new album, The Drought will be ready for release in October with a national tour to follow. The Kill Devil Hills will also be releasing a limited edition vinyl import version of Heathen Songs through Spanish record label Bang! Records (a Spanish label which has many other underground Australian bands on its roster).