The Killed By Death series was started by Swedish record collector Johan Kugelberg with the first volume's release in 1988, its name borrowed from a song by the British band Motörhead. Inspired by Tim Warren's Back from the Grave series, Kugelberg was encouraged by Warren to start his own series documenting early punk rock. Among the more obscure tracks by non-mainstream bands was the entire first EP by the Beastie Boys who had since switched from punk to hip-hop. When this first KBD record came out, the Beasties were topping the charts with their album Licensed to Ill while their hardcore punk catalog was out-of-print and selling for large sums on the collectors market, prompting Kugelberg to write in his KBD liner notes, "What do you do when a record becomes filthy expensive? Stick it on a comp."

By the end of 1989 Kugelberg's Redrum Records' had released the first four volumes of Killed By Death, after which a fifth and sixth Killed By Death emerged in 1993, issued by an Australian record collector. Over 30 subsequent volumes of Killed By Death were released during the 1990s, all assembled by various anonymous compilers and released independently of one another. This resulted in the records' diversion from any strict numbering system as no one could predict where and when a particular volume of Killed By Death would hit the streets.

Many volumes of Killed By Death were limited to as few as 500 copies, resulting in these compilations of hard-to-find records becoming collectors' items in and of themselves. Many volumes of Killed By Death resembled mixtapes of assorted singles from people's personal collections seemingly with no particular rhyme or reason connecting them. Other volumes focused on bands from particular countries, such as France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Scotland or New Zealand. Several Killed By Death album sleeves boasted "All American punk, no foreign junk," while others homed in on punk rock from a specific U.S. state, such as punk singles from Florida or demo tapes by Californian punk bands.   - Wikipedia