"Thrashed (Limited Edition)" Collab K&K + Destruction
Hey everyone,
Robb here.
I am super excited to announce a Killers & Kings collaboration called “Thrashed” with three of my favorite 80s thrash bands: Destruction, Forbidden, and Sacred Reich.
In this Journal I’m going to talk to you about how this “limited edition” collab happened, why I felt strongly about doing a collab with these bands, and walk you through the various stages the design went through to meld the Destruction logo with the Killers & Kings logo
One of the main reasons that I decided to do a Killers & Kings + Thrash collaboration was that I recently went to a streetwear convention in Las Vegas with my buddy Dom Deluca who owns the skateboard/streetwear shop on Melrose called Brooklyn Projects.
While walking through the convention we came a cross a streetwear company whose name I can't remember, (nor would I even want to promote), who had various flyers from 80s thrash and punk shows all over their booth. At first I was really stoked to see this, I was like "wow, a place that gets where Dom and I came from"
But as I started talking to the people at the company, they clearly had no clue about any of it. In fact the guy straight up told me "yeah these are cool flyers right? We downloaded them off of The Google!”.
Fuck that.
And while I "get it"… I was kinda pissed that they were taking the culture that I grew up in, (and in some small way contributed to), and we're just using it to sell their brand.
Dom called ‘em Culture Vultures.
I walked away thinking, I want to do the collaboration with these bands and actually have it be from an authentic place. With the people that were there at the beginning of it, from people that contributed to it, and put it out to the world as a “limited edition”, premium shirt, with a rich, 14-color layout that stayed as true to the original art as is possible via modern screenprinting methods today.
It was an epic undertaking, I reached out to several bands, (some of whom unfortunately declined after we created some really amazing artwork) but all 3 bands involved happily signed off on the collaboration. And all of the bands involved in this collab have been paid to use their artwork.
The first K&K / Thrash “limited edition” collab shirt I’m releasing is Destruction- Infernal Overkill.