KILL HANNAH
Until There's Nothing Left Of Us
By Jaime Black
photos by Tyler Shields
I
f you’re a millennial and grew up
watching bands nearly every week in
the City, it's hard to imagine the musical
landscape without Kill Hannah on the
scene. Up until a few years ago, the glamrock group has been a staple on the
Chicago scene. Even when the band has
been less active, as it has in recent years,
the band's bassist and Chicago musical
impresario Greg Corner has never been
absent from the culture around the city,
whether DJ'ing for the President and First
Lady, or serving as musical director and
co-host at JBTV.
When Kill Hannah announced they
would perform two final shows in Chicago
- December 18th and 19th at Metro for the
tenth edition of the group's long-running
New Heart For X-Mas series, following a
handful of dates in the UK - it was and
wasn't a surprise. With most of the band
members now located in LA – including
frontman and songwriter Mat Devine - it
was only a matter of time before the group
made their retirement official. "Everyone
thought the band broke up already,"
Corner admits when I interview him in a
top floor suite of the Public Hotel. “Our
last US tour was in 2010 with the Smashing
Pumpkins. So, it's been a while."
The primary reason for the retirement
of the band is its various members are no
longer centrally located. “Mat is in LA
now, [with former guitarist] Jonny
(Radtke) and [drummer] Elias (Mallin),
and then [guitarist] Dan (Wiese) and I are
still here in Chicago, "Corner explains. It's
not an understatement to say that the various members of Kill Hannah have kept
musically active over the years. Mallin
logged time with pop acts like Ke$ha and
MKTO, while Radtke spent four years in
Filter, in addition to performing live with
A Perfect Circle-offshoot Ashes Divide.
Devine, meanwhile has been busy with an
array of projects, from landing a role as
Grim Hunter in the ill-fated Spider-Man:
Turn Off the Dark musical, to recording a
solo album (2014's Gold Blooded) under the
name Wrongchilde, to writing 2013's Weird
War One: The Antihero's Guide to Surviving
Everyday Life, and this past winter's Nobody
Will Buy This: Don't Drink and Tweet.
"Everyone's been busy doing their own
things," the bassist confirms. "When we
think about like, 'Oh, can we get in a van
again and tour the United States and sleep
on floors and make no money?' It's like, no
one can afford to do that anymore. That's
why we're like, 'Alright, this is probably it
then.'"
The band's origins date back to 1995,
when Devine created Kill Hannah as both
a band name and its first song title. "I
remember exactly where I was standing
when I thought that name was a good
idea," the singer recalls when we connect
on the phone. "I was actually standing in
front of the visual arts building at (Illinois
State University), and I was thinking of
how I wanted a name that I could see on a
marquee along my favorite bands at the
time. It was kind of like a revenge fantasy,
where I imagined thousands of people all
wearing T-shirts that say 'Kill Hannah,'
because I was so hurt by [Devine's titular
ex, Hannah]."
"It was a dual vision of, on one hand,
making music that I really care about, and
at the same time, trying to really get back
at this girl," Devine continues. In 1996, the
group performed their first show under
the name Kill Hannah, in addition to
releasing the Hummingbirds the Size of
Bullets EP and rarely-referenced full length
H