Thrashed: (Limited Edition) collab between K&K + Forbidden
Hey you guys
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” Forbidden 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 Forbidden logo with the Killers & Kings logo
*I talked about this in the previous Destruction Journal, so skip down a few paragraphs if you already read it.*
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 second K&K / Thrash “limited edition” collab shirt I’m releasing is Forbidden - Forbidden Evil.
***
As you may or may not know, I started the band Forbidden back in 1985 with my buddy Jim Pittman.
I wrote about half of the first album including songs like "Forbidden Evil", Chalice Of Blood", and "As Good As Dead" as well as quite a few others which never saw the light of day except in demo form such as "Legions Of Death", the Exodus-worshipping "You're Next To Die" (whose riffs later ended up in "I Profit" by Vio-Lence), and the gloriously titled instrumental (and blatant Mercyful Fate rip-off) "Egypt Has Fallen". Craig and I were the primary song writers, and while I eventually left to join Vio-Lence, these songs and his band will always hold a place in my heart.
Craig valiantly carried on the band after I left, and Forbidden went on to have a respectable amount of success, even surpassing Vio-Lence at the time (much to my chagrin!) with albums like "Forbidden Evil" and "Twisted Into Form".
It was my choice to enlist Jim's cousin Paul Bostaph to play drums (which as you can imagine, promptly ended Jim and my friendship for a short while, he even threatened to sue!) 10 years later, Paul would eventually go on to join Slayer, where he remains to this day.
Craig and I have stayed friends, we get together and jam whenever I throw a birthday bash or a Robb Flynn & Friends, so when I approached him about this collab, he was stoked to be a part of it.
Their logo in particular was an interesting challenge to blend with the name Killers & Kings, in that it had to be divided up into 2 different fonts. There wasn't really a way to make the words Killers & Kings all one line, so we needed to think a bit outside the box.