The Kills - Heart of a Dog

The Kills’ comeback single ‘Doing It To Death’ earlier this year smouldered with obsessive hunger to create - a burning drive to double-six it to the bitter end lying in its heart. Their fifth album title ‘Ash & Ice’ hints at violently colliding opposites; hot and cold fizzing together. And on the evidence of Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart’s second preview, ‘Heart of a Dog,’ that’s a chemical tension that’s only set to grow more magnetic.

Name-checking a novel of the same name by the Russian satirist Mikhail Bulgakov - about a stray dog who plots to destroy a stuffed owl, and then turns into a very uncouth, out of control human - there’s a strain of undying loyalty to The Kills’ ‘Heart of a Dog’. Chewing through chains and breaking spells, there’s something fixated and tenacious about Hince’s sparing guitar slashes in combination with an ever relentless, never quitting drum machine. Meanwhile, Mosshart’s at once helplessly devoted and destructively hell-bent. “I want strings attached,” she growls, challenging opposition, and backflipping her way through the video at the same time. Dangerous, fuzzed-up, and on the edge of obliteration, this is The Kills at their best.