Kisser came together in 2024, right after the breakup of their old post-punk outfit the Tacks. The band — friends who’d already been messing around in side projects (Catsick, Zhukov, Nervous Jerk, Hög, Carradine Choke, Master Blaster) — didn’t want to start over from scratch, but they didn’t want to repeat themselves either.
“Around the same time as we were doing the Tacks, Craig, Johnny and I had a side project called Catsick which was just the most awful hardcore you could imagine but was purely a recording project,” Luke says. “We wanted to keep playing music together but also didn’t want to just do the same thing, we wanted to add more melody and layers.”
That impulse led straight into “This world swallows people whole,” a record that drags hardcore through a strange, electronic filter and doesn’t look back. The sound is messy in the right ways — Nalita’s vocals cutting through walls of distortion, bass drops firing under guitar noise, the whole thing stitched together like a live set that never stops for breath.
The band’s sound shift didn’t come from a plan, more like curiosity gone too far. “Johnny had been making electronic music on Fruity Loops but for no reason since he was a teen,” Luke explains.
“I had been doing another goth project, Social Union, which used sample pads. However, the big change was when Craig was mixing down our recordings and started adding in some bass drops etc to make it weirder. This led to a realisation that we all know how this shit works and why not make something that has zero breaks in between songs, is actually interesting to watch and gives a point of difference. Plus we wanted to bring waaaay more gear for when we play gigs lol.”
There’s a grim weight to it too — a sense of everything collapsing in real time. “Honestly this whole release is pretty grim,” Luke says. “The EP is called ‘This world swallows people whole’ and that is kinda reflected in the themes Nalita sings about. General disdain for living in this Orwellian hellscape, the ideology of individualised living, a lack of community forcing everyone to fight for an imaginary piece of the pie despite there being a fucking abundance for everyone in this world.”
It’s harsh, loud, and strangely hypnotic — a record that moves like a machine but bleeds like a person. The noise never really settles, and that’s the point. Kisser sound like they’re not just reacting to the chaos around them — they’re dragging it onstage and turning it into something alive.
“This world swallows people whole” is out now on Bandcamp.
