Cleveland's Kill the Fall Experiences a Rebirth

Kill the Fall. Credit: Courtesy of Raymon Terry

One day last year after Raymon Terry changed out of his martial arts gear and got into his punk rock garb to practice with his group Kill the Fall (he and his bandmates used to rehearse at the Middleburg Heights gym he runs), one of his martial arts students, Ryan Williams, heard the group practicing and was intrigued.

“He heard us, and it caught his ear, and after that, he asked what the band’s name was and if we were active,” says Terry one morning from the band’s current studio at Rock & Roll City Studios on the near West Side. A set list of about 20 songs on a white board hangs from the wall, and there’s a Nine Inch Nails poster from a show at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia on the wall as well. “He asked me to send some music to him and [producer] Bob Marlette. They thought it had potential. Once I heard where they come from — Bob with Black Sabbath and Tracy Chapman and Ryan with Red Sun Rising and New Monarch — I said we should work together.”

The duo started working with Terry on new material, and they’ve made significant progress. A new EP is due out this year.

“It’s a great team,” says Terry. “They bring a lot out of me. They push us to be at our best at all times. I sit back and trust them.”

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Raymon Terry doing his martial arts thing. Credit: Courtesy of Raymon Terry

Terry, a Jiu Jitsu Brown Belt, played football and other sports while growing up. But after seeing the first Ultimate Fighting Championships in the early ’90s, he gravitated toward martial arts.

“I developed a huge interest in Jiu Jitsu and grappling,” he says. “When I was young, my grandfather taught me how to box. I’ve always liked fighting, but it was something I didn’t do until later.”

He’s balanced his interest in martial arts and rock ‘n’ roll ever since.

Terry, who grew up in Berea, listened to punk bands such as the Misfits and Minor Threat when he was young. Later, when grunge became popular, he became a fan of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. That music would influence his first band, the punk group Counterclockwise, as well as his next band, Allergic to Whores, which formed in 1996.

“Counterclockwise was punk rock band, but I wanted to do something more hardcore and thrashier,” he says when asked about why he left the group behind to form Allergic to Whores.

One of the local scene’s more active groups, Allergic to Whores regularly toured and recorded.

“We were on Warped Tour and played with bands like Against All Authority and the Misfits,” says Terry. “We would go on tours for one to two months at a time. We had a record deal with Sound Pollution. We got hooked up with them through Tony Erba from [the local punk band] Nine Shocks Terror. He liked what we were doing and thought we would fit well on that label. His band was on that label. He put in a call to the label. We recorded our first record for them and mastered in four hours at [the local studio] Invisible City. It was a big warehouse downtown. We were on a budget, so we had to knock it out.”

Terry did all the managing and booking and songwriting for the band. At the end, he even released two EPs on his own record label.

Kill the Fall formed about a year after Allergic to Whores disbanded; Terry simply wanted to explore a new sound.

“I wanted to focus more on writing,” he says. “I didn’t want to do super-fast thrash, which is great. But after so many years of it, I was kind of done. I wanted to elaborate into different songwriting and do something a little slower and sludgier.”

John Morgan, the drummer in the local hard rock band Disengage, helped Terry in the early stages. The current lineup now features Terry on vocals and guitar, Dustin Hamilton on drums and Spiro Sintsirmas on bass.

A longtime collaborator with the band, Ohio native Anthony Zart did the art for the single.

“Anthony Zart has been doing my artwork for 20 plus years,” says Terry. “He was in a band called the Atomics that would play with Allergic to Whores. We just became very close. He does artwork for the gym too. I can tell him an idea in my head. To anybody else, it can sound like jumbled nonsense, but he can make sense of it.”

One of the band’s new singles, “Screaming into Silence,” suggests Kill the Fall’s new direction. It sounds symphonic without a symphony and possesses emotional depth as Terry starts the song by ominously whispering.

“The lyrics I had for a while,” says Terry. “I wanted something big and dark. One day, I was at a martial arts tournament, and I always take my guitar with me. I was sitting around between coaching, and I came up with main riff and recorded it on my phone. I sent it to Ryan [Williams], and he said he liked it. I had it written and that’s the beauty is when I bring it to Dustin [Hamilton] and Spiro [Sintsirmasand] to add their touch. Dustin came up with some drums that make the song and move it. When Dustin and Spiro brought their parts to it, they made it massive. His drumming carried the song and allowed me to open up much more into my vocal patterns.”

Going forward, Terry says the band would like to get a booking agent and play locally and regionally on a more regular basis.

“Until then, we’ll just hammer away,” he says. “I thought that if I am going to get back into it, I want to attack and touch on all the areas I never did in the past.”

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