A KILLER'S CONFESSION will release "Victim 3" on November 13 through MNRK Heavy, closing out the three-album narrative the band has been building since "Victim 1". Leading it is "Roses", out now with a video directed and produced by Dusten Boles.
The band is led by Waylon Reavis, formerly of MUSHROOMHEAD, and "Roses" takes disappointment and neglect somewhere other than self-pity — toward giving up on outside approval altogether.
"'Roses' was written from a point of view of where everything that you have done was in vain," Reavis said. "We've all been to that point of feeling unappreciated, but I feel like roses is a statement of it doesn't matter what you do as long as you and only you know why you did it. In the end, never look for a pat on the back, because you'll never get the acknowledgment that you're seeking. There will be no roses on my grave."
The trilogy follows a vigilante serial killer who targeted what he judged to be society's worst offenders. On "Victim 3" he is on death row, out of options, and whatever warped sense of justice started him off has curdled into something worse. The album takes him through the last stage of that descent — from the electronics and melancholy of "Roses" through the grooves of "Meat Hook" and the aggression of "The One" to the resignation of closer "Worth Saving" — and offers no redemption at the end of it.
It was built around Reavis, Evan McKeever and Dusty Boles in sessions split between Nashville and Denver.
"This is an art project of storytelling and madness," Reavis said. "It's a collection of stories from different individuals in separate time periods with their own agendas. For me, it's a big passion project. It's closer to my heart than anything I've ever done. I've done great things in my career, but nothing compares to this. It gave me purpose. It gave me youth. It gave me fire. It gave me a universe."
"Victim 3" track listing:
- The One
- Meat Hook
- Roses
- Sick Condition
- Blinding Lights
- Sinners
- Guillotine
- Undertow
- Never Alone
- Pull Me Under
- Worth Saving
Track five is the band's stripped-back reading of The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights", released ahead of the album — an odd fit on paper that works by dropping the heaviness entirely and letting the melancholy underneath the original carry it.
A KILLER'S CONFESSION formed in 2016 and have since worked with Brian "Head" Welch of KORN, Chad Gray of MUDVAYNE, Aaron Nordstrom of GEMINI SYNDROME and Reavis's old MUSHROOMHEAD bandmate JMANN. The "Everything Comes Full Circle" tour, with DIZASTERPIECE and DEAD THINGS, opens November 4 in Raleigh and runs to December 5 in Lakewood, Ohio — which puts the band on stage in Louisville the night the album lands.