The Lovekill

3,271 plays (863 listeners)
In your library (0 plays)

Add to my Library Share

The Lovekill Bio.

The basement of Stephen Pedersen’s Omaha home isn’t exactly what you would refer to as a “luxurious recording studio.” The ceilings are low. The walls are damp. Fourteen-hour days are pretty much the norm. “But that’s exactly what we needed,” says Lovekill singer/guitarist Chris Rager, now kicking back on his porch at home in Cleveland. “I think that it was clear to us what we needed to do. We were in fucking Nebraska. I didn’t have anything else to do but sit there and record vocals and overdub guitars all day. I didn’t have any other agenda but to make a great record.” And that, inevitably, is what they did. But the way that we’re going about explaining this is actually kind of backwards. To really understand how the Lovekill (Rager, guitarist Jonah Bayer, bassist/singer Carla Cherry and drummer Craig Ramsey) arrived at this point, you have to go back some 10 years earlier when, still in the early stages of their adolescence, Bayer and Rager bonded over a mutual love for rugged, mid-’90s hardcore bands.

Keeping in touch over the years (and even forming the necessary and forgettable teenage punk band at some point in between) Rager and Bayer wouldn’t find their collective musical voice together until they reached adulthood. Formed in the summer of 2001, the Lovekill originally began without Bayer (who was away at Ithaca College in upstate New York pursuing a mass media degree). “I remember seeing them play in Kent, and it was a totally different thing,” says Bayer of the band’s original line-up.