KILL THE ROBOT ANNOUNCE DEBUT SELF-TITLED ALBUM TO BE RELEASED JULY 11TH VIA DARK LAB RECORDINGS
9th June 2025As a creative, Stephen Gibb has everything and nothing to prove at the same time. After all, there aren’t many musicians who can claim to have played shows with Slayer, Anthrax and a Bee Gee within a 24-hour period. But right now, having spent the best part of three decades playing music, Stephen’s new band Kill The Robot has landed to truly showcase his own songwriting talents.
Kill The Robot’s debut self-titled album is an eclectic and yet decisively cohesive piece of work. Produced by multi-Grammy-award winning Warren Riker (Down, The Fugees, Lauryn Hill, Santana), it takes the listener on a journey that incorporates massive stadium rock anthems akin to the Foo Fighters, QOTSA and Muse, the prog of Pink Floyd and Steve Wilson, hints of Killing Joke darkness, and adds a hefty dose of 80s UK pop and electronica – à la Thomas Dolby, Howard Jones, Tears For Fears and even mid-career Adam Ant.
The band’s origin is actually steeped in sadness, after the passing of Stephen’s life-term friend and producer Brett ‘Cosmo’ Thorngren who died by suicide in Georgia during the pandemic.
Stephen, Gil (formally of Florida nu-metallers Endo) and Brett had often jammed and written together, so after the duo travelled to the funeral together to commemorate their friend’s life, it was during a moment of darkness they decided to honour their friend and create some songs.
Says Stephen: “Brett was a genius producer and engineer and drummer. Gil and I hadn’t hung out in years and after the funeral, he was like, ‘man, do you want to get together and write some songs and just like, deal with this?’. My initial response internally was ‘absolutely not’ because I was still angry at him and I was, if I’m honest, a little bitter about things in the industry for me in the past. I was like, ‘I don’t really want to open up that wound right now’.
“Then after about a month I started thinking that might be a good thing to do just for my own mental health. And so we started getting together and not long after Gil brought JP in and it turned out he was this super creative kid that really kind of took things into places I wouldn’t have imagined. My good friend Kenny Gordova came on board to play bass and record the album with us, and Gordon joined to bring the band into the live arena and beyond.”
Originally dubbed ‘Dethbryte’ after a song penned by Acid Bath’s Dax Riggs on his solo album ‘We Sing of Only Blood or Love’ and, as he explains, a moniker that reflected the positive outcome of death, Stephen eventually opted for Kill The Robot as a reaction to current times and obsessions with AI, technology and humanity.
While Kill The Robot does acknowledge death and sadness, its main focus is one of positivity and celebration of life and the beauty of music and the importance of ‘the song’.
“I’ve been lucky in that I’ve always been in bands that had songs. I come from a world of songs; they’re actually the meat on the bone. Melody is a big deal for me, in the music I listen to and in the music I like to make,” he states. “So it was fun to flex more of that and those influences like Tears for Fears or Porcupine Tree, where there’s real imagination and touches of melodic, harmonic sophistication and layering.
“I want to be writing songs that more people resonate with and not alienating people. I think there’s enough alienation in this world and honestly I think music is the one true uniting force we all have. Music has that power to do things that nothing else can and it’s the one language we all speak.
“I want to write a song that people will remember, not some bubblegum shit that people can forget, something that somebody has an emotional response to.”
He continues: “I wanted to make a record that was fun to listen to. I grew up on Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath and every time you listen to them, there is something new to hear that you maybe missed the last time. Even years later, I can still go back and listen to Pink Floyd records and be like, what is that? What was the point of that? Why did they think to do that? Or what was the inspiration behind that? I’m still marvelling at music, you know? And so for me that’s the idea with Kill The Robot.”
The recording process was, says Stephen, filled with laughter and smiles, with the end result being a bold and unique album. The fuzzed-up ‘Drug’ – a song about relationships – was the first song penned, featuring an almost Johnny Marr-esque meets The Cure vibe. It opened the floodgates to hundreds of riffs, and then songs being written, 10 of which are featured on the album.
Opener ‘Mothership’ is a song dedicated to their fallen friend and is both tender and gargantuan in its delivery; ‘Right Now’ is a dirty, brooding rocker; first single ‘Western Shores’, with its Van Halen/ Big Country-energy vibe is an ode to hot summer nights at the beach and was inspired by the death of Stephen’s friend and Foo Fighters legend Taylor Hawkins; ‘See The World’ – which features a guest background vocals from none other than Stephen’s dad – is another dedication to Cosmo: a song about contemplation and not taking things for granted. The album ends with the apocalyptic prog beast ‘Atomic Haze’, bringing the epic musical journey to its natural conclusion.
“There’s a lot of introspection around death on the record but I don’t think it’s coming from a sad place,” adds Stephen. “It’s coming from more of an acceptance that this is a part of life and it’s what we do with these darker, sadder moments of our lives that really define us; it’s through loss that we find parts of ourselves that were sleeping.
“This record was not made as a eulogy, it was really just inspired by what I think we could have achieved with Brett that we didn’t get to achieve with him while he was alive. So this is our little love note to him.”
Born in St John’s Wood, London, Stephen moved around as a youngster living on the Isle of Man and Australia, before settling in Miami, Florida, a place he calls home.
Stephen’s musical trajectory has been unique. The eldest son of Barry Gibb, he has toured the world playing in his father’s solo band, including Barry’s last show to date on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury festival 2017.
In contrast, as a life-long metalhead, which began with his discovery of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Stephen has spent decades playing with some of modern rock and metal’s most iconic figures.
He’s played with Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx in a project called 58; played bass with former Ozzy Osbourne/ current Pantera axeman Zakk Wylde in Wylde’s band Black Label Society; toured the world and recorded guitar with New Orleans’ sludge legends Crowbar; was a member of Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta’s doom-laden project Kingdom of Sorrow, as well as Jamey’s solo project Jasta; and finally currently tours with reformed legendary 80s rockers Saigon Kick.
Right now though, Kill The Robot is allowing Stephen to step out into the limelight and truly show the world the extent of the musical craft he and his cohorts have created.
As he says himself, being a Gibb “is and has been a pretty, pretty large shadow to reside under at times”.
“It’s different in some ways to things I’ve done in the past because I’ve always joined bands or been a sideman for the most part. When I was young, I had my own bands and then once I moved to California, started playing with Zakk Wylde, I started being a sideman and then that became the thing to survive in this business for years.
“Being a sideman is a great thing because, especially for me, I’ve really loved every band I’ve ever been in. It was a joy and an honour to share the stage with any of those guys and I’ve loved just about every minute of it, but I felt at the same time that I thought it would be fun to start something from the ground up.”
Writing and recording in Miami at Stephen’s home studio, Kill The Robot sees four musicians hone their craft with no time pressures and no boundaries, which Stephen is very grateful for.
“Although I have the Barry Gibb stuff in my DNA, and I’ve made tons of music with my dad as well, my shit is heavy metal and new wave, and I love old blues and jazz. I love everything. I’m soaking it all in. Gil’s definitely more of a goth kind of vocalist, definitely in the realm of Adam Ant, Ian Astbury or even Pete Burns from Dead or Alive. JP’s played with Phil Collins, he’s also a master of Latin drums and percussion, and he’s bringing flavours to our music that probably shouldn’t exist there.”
“I still want to tip my hat to the past but I’m hoping for this band I can grow my musical personality out a little bit more. I don’t want to just keep myself in a box if I don’t have to. I just figured that it would be fun to just try to push in as many different directions as we could push and still find cohesion.
“I’ve gotten to a point where I like my life simple and humble and I just really love making music,” he says in conclusion. “I love playing music and if I wasn’t able to do that I would probably be following around tribal people recording them playing music because I love music from everywhere. It’s an interesting time to be alive and to be creative.”
Album track-listing:
1, Mothership
2, Western Shores
3, See The World
4, Better Than
5, Summer Days
6, No13ise
7, Agave
8, Right Now
9, Drug
10, Atomic Haze
Kill The Robot are:
Stephen Gibb (guitars/ synth/ vocals)
Gil Bitton (vocals)
Gordon Myers (bass)
Jean-Pierre Espiritusanto (drums)
