The quickest way into Krein’s Low-Budget Death Extravaganza is through the accident that started it: a joke name tossed around by Filip Krein and Piggy Op long before the pandemic, which somehow grew into a band with two albums’ worth of material before their debut even dropped.
Filip says the whole idea “goes back to the pre-pandemic era and started with Piggy Op. First there was the joke name, and then the thought that maybe we should actually start a project.” They’d known each other for years but had never played together. The shared language was there, the shared taste was obvious, and, as Filip puts it, “the style was a bit blurry at first.”
Things snapped into place once Francis Massacre entered the room — someone who, as Filip says, “just walked in and immediately marked himself on the map of the Polish underground.” He’d already left fingerprints on Marie Laveau, Natures Mortes and Eat My Teeth. Then, after recording the album earlier this year, drummer Slick Mick Swagger joined and made the lineup feel permanent. Filip sums it up: the chemistry “is buzzing,” and the sound pulls from whatever they collectively orbit, aiming to “go beyond punk and its derivatives… touching funk, jazz, blues, dub, or disco. We don’t stop. We keep floating into unknown waters.”
View this post on Instagram
Their new frenzy punk offering “Evil Love” arrives December 5 on vinyl and CD through Enigmatic Records, with a cassette version possibly following. It didn’t begin as an album.
Filip explains that it “was originally conceived as an EP with the first four tracks,” but the band kept writing faster than expected, and “we added three more pieces that were supposed to appear on the next album ‘The Culling.’” That second record is already mostly written, and the problem now is too much material: “it’s hard to choose what to play and what to skip.”
For Francis, “Evil Love” marks a personal shift. “Our material was meant to be more or less experimental,” he says, pointing to blues, post-punk psychedelia, surf rock, punk and “a bit of jazz with a stoner sprinkle.” After years focused on deathrock, he found the new space liberating: “it felt good to create something that stepped out of that dark, narrow mood… finally I could draw on inspirations that never had room in previous projects.” He names Greg Ginn, Tony Iommi, Rikk Agnew and Ron Emory as the players steering his approach here.
View this post on Instagram
Piggy Op’s breakdown of the tracklist reads like a diary of early rehearsals. “Fear the Night” was the first sign something real was forming — a jam built on a beat from the band’s then-drummer Iga Olechowska. The snare came first, then the kick, then the frantic hi-hat. “We immediately thought it’s fucking awesome,” Piggy says. He added “these two notes that go harder as the hi-hat kicks in,” turning it into a perfect buildup for Filip’s lyrics. “Francis’ manic guitar is just the icing on the cake.”
“Alexa” is their own arrangement of a Moron’s Morons standout — what Piggy calls “their best song.”
“I Think I’m in Love” lands as “a fucked up, post-punk blues love song,” taking cues from a certain San Francisco punk group that once sang about cruising around in a police truck.
“Girl Gone Wild,” their first single, also sprang from Iga’s rhythmic experiments. “Try counting the time at the beginning!” Piggy jokes.
“Don’t Say It’s My Blood” flips the energy of “Girl Gone Wild,” sending it in a heavier, sharper direction: “heavy, fierce and subversive when the chorus kicks in.”
The title track “Evil Love” — again built from one of Iga’s beats — came together around a riff Piggy wrote that subconsciously echoed Jan Hammer Group’s “Don’t You Know.” Francis added “that awesome ditty at the end of the riff” and the twisted chorus. They recorded it live: “one take, what you hear is what you get.”
“Cover Your Eyes” pulls a thread from TSOL’s “Superficial Love,” but the band spins it toward a woozy, expanding jam with Francis’ “mad guitar” steering the detour.
Their singles “Girl Gone Wild” and “I Think I’m in Love” hinted at the shape of the album — a restless mix of garage rock, post-punk, and odd-angled psychedelia, and the full thing proves it was worth the wait. Their backgrounds in Moron’s Morons, Tasiemka, TZN Xenna, Nameless Creations and Natures Mortes give the band the feel of a cross-section rather than a debut.
Filip’s influences stretch across The Jesus Lizard, Cows, Butthole Surfers, Wipers, The Stooges, Jay Reatard, The Murder City Devils and The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster — and the record feels like it holds all of that without committing to any single lane. They write quickly, they keep what sticks, and they don’t sand off the rough edges.
As Filip puts it, “we make exciting music that pulls from many sources and creates something fresh.”
View this post on Instagram
With “Evil Love” already out and “The Culling” loaded behind it, KLBDE are charging straight ahead, rattling the rails, already leaving skid marks on next year’s setlists, and finishing the ride with something wild.
