review from Unrestrained Magazine #29:
Easily becoming one of my favourite underground labels right now, Crucial Blast continues to deliver unique bands for music fans to digest. Granted it takes a few spins to get into these bands but the discovery of each band is rewarding. So I Had To Shoot Him is the latest in a line of great releases the label has let loose into the world over the last little while (Infidel?/Castro, Genghis Tron, The Mass!). Mix together the works of Blondie, grind legends Napalm Death, the manic assault of Melt Banana and a rock ’n’ roll swagger à la Elastica and you’ve pretty much got So I Had To Shoot Him. I know, sounds insane, but it works with killer results. Plus, you gotta love song titles like “King Diamond in the Rough” and “People Hugging” and “Football.” Now Kevi and I have a new “On Tour” CD.
review from Orlando Weekly:
Everybody knows that girl, the one who's the loudmouth in drama class, the black-clad bookworm who puts out, the one who's not really "pretty" but is inescapably hot, the girl who can drink you and your friends under the table while intentionally saying just the wrong things to the redneck at the bar. Libby Schaub is that girl, and So I Had To Shoot Him is her band. Alpha Males is a brutal album brimming over with personality, mostly due to Schaub's aggressive, dramatic voice; her vocal approach is both instantly feminine and punishingly hostile. That she's fronting a skull-splitting math-metal crew capable of on-a-dime tempo changes, intricate arrangements and gut-rumbling riffs makes for something akin to Miranda Sex Garden colliding with Dillinger Escape Plan.
review from Zero Magazine:
Crucial Blast has quickly become one of my favorite labels and they might even win my award for label of the year, donning some of the most unique, genre defying releases that have ever fallen upon my ears. The mass, with their abrasive mix of metal Mr. Bungle, lo fi garage, with horns and Genghis Tron, with their grind-core meets hard dance techno. Now let’s welcome So I Had to Shoot Him. I didn’t know what to think when I first listened to this disc, and I still don’t think I quite get it, but with each listen it is growing on me more and more.
It all makes sense now, as I am finding out that this music is called Power-violence, and or power-pop. For powerful the music definitely is. The band has the calculating edge of Dillinger Escape Plan mixed with the female-fronted indie-rock styles of The Gossip. For anyone who dares the extreme waters of experimental music, this is a must listen, and will fit nicely in your favorite mix CD containing the bands Sleep, Sonic Youth, Daughters, Soundgarden and the Pixies, because you are that person that listens to everything music has to offer.
review from Smother webzine:
I haven't heard power violence this good in a long time. With a female frontwoman at the helm, So I Had to Shoot Him screeches, wails, croons, and screams their way into your skull to give your brain a good shaking. Pogo fanatics will have to go get their pogo stick as this album will almost certainly drive you bonkers with crazed abandon. Sexy vocals and blast beats give it a dance punk cum power violence vibe. If you sit back and listen for more than fifteen seconds, I guarantee you're going to be bruised by the punishing guitar wails and sick harmonics. Filthy and I love every second of it!
review from Hartboiled webzine:
What the fucking hell is that? L7 meets Dillinger Escape Plan? Blondie meets Daughters? Pop meets Powerviolence? Keyboards meet grind? Doom meets Can? French chanson meets Kraftwerk? Awesome? Definitely! I am impressed and I am surprised. So I had To Shoot Him from NYC / NJ are definitely sick in their heads. Incredible Metal riffs, sweet Pop melodies, blasting punk and catchy rock riffs, this has it all and even more! It is impossible to describe their music. Singer Libby Schaub screams, sings, screeches and kicks ass so hard you couldn't even believe it, all of the instruments pummel and swirl, creating a hard to believe sound. Like I said hard to decribe, imagine the soundtrack to a schizo touching an electric line while dancing and watching a car crash at night. I guess some might say this is just exhausting and hard to listen to, but the poppy catchy parts leave time to breathe. Everybody into extreme music who is open for, well, strange stuff has to check out So I Had To Shoot Him.
review from AllMusic.com:
Although you'd never know it by listening to the radio or watching MTV, the early 21st century — perhaps more than any other time in the history of rock — has seen quite a few bands that have little regard for sticking to a single genre. A prime example is the New York City/New Jersey quintet So I Had to Shoot Him, which has created a style the bandmembers refer to as "sex metal," in which singer Libby's "Debbie Harry meets death metal" vocals do battle with the noisecore-ish technicality of the instrumentalists in the band. The quintet's 2005 release, Alpha Males and Popular Girls, accomplishes what most noisecore sets out to do: it creates an instant headache for the uninitiated, with an overabundance of what are often referred to as "blast beats" and discordant guitar chords. But then again, bands like So I Had to Shoot Him should be commended for not sticking to conventionality (especially in this day and age, when so much music is by the numbers), as evidenced by such selections as "People Hugging and Football," "Another Roman E' Clef by Hart Bochner," and the amusingly titled "King Diamond in the Rough." One thing's for certain: So I Had to Shoot Him won't be confused with No Doubt anytime soon.
review from DEAD ANGEL webzine:
This band is a new one to me, in spite of the fact that they've been around since 1995, with a slew of EPs, singles, compilation tracks, and even a Polish cassette release to show for it. Despite all that activity, this is actually the band's first full-length album. The band is essentially four guys with amusing names (Prince Kodiak, The Fantasticality, Lord Lion Frenzy, and just plain Don -- he must have been passed out somewhere sleeping off a hangover when they handed out the swell names) playing within a traditional framework of guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards, with singer / keyboard player Libby (aka Contessa Von Bismarck) wailing over them, but the way they approach playing is anything but traditional. The songs are loud and frequently frantic shapeshifters, as the band's sound mutates from devolved pop to extreme metal to power-electronics violence to other forms they probably don't even have a name for yet, switching gears so fast that it's nearly impossible to keep up with them... and far above the clatter, Libby wails and shrieks like an operatic pop singer possessed by the spirit of Patty Waters. Even for a Crucial Blast release, this is deeply strange shit. Their scattergun approach and churning bursts of heaviness often remind me of labelmates The Mass, and when they're really thrashing away (as on "Cadavertising") they're just about as heavy, but where The Mass is all about impossibly technical musical insanity, this band is more concerned with genre-hopping (not to mention chaos and pure confusion). Imagine an American version of Melt-Banana on steroids after sitting through back-to-back shows by Napalm Death and Diamanda Galas and the blurry, too-fast-for-words picture begins to come into sharper focus, does it not? "King Diamond in the Rough" is pure blinding extreme metal (after being severely bent out of shape, naturally) with Libby warbling in operatic fashion through what sounds like a canyon of reverb; "Chausson Chansson" opens up like heavy metal dudes playing new wave before breaking into avant-noise chaos; "Contusion Schematics" is driven by furious metallic riffing and pounding drums. The rest of the songs (ten in all) are just as whacked-out and over the top, and it frequently sounds like they actually recorded twenty or thirty songs and just piled them on top of each other. Bizarre but perversely engaging... is the beginning of the rise of extreme opera metal? Whatever it is, those who are hep to the spastic and constantly evolving sounds of bands like Jumbo's Killcrane, The Mass, Painkiller, and Melt-Banana, but still like a bit o' the sugar-sweet pop goodness mixed in with their bitter metal poison, should look into this and definitely see the band live.
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