backlinks wont kill a domain unless your sending lot of the same and crappy backlinks such as 1000s of blog comments with sb expecting to rank!
lots of diverse good quality backlinks will do a new domain no harm at all as long as it is a consistent, steady stream and diverse,
I've been testing this over the last 2 weeks on a brand new domain, i have sent at least 7 different types of links to it in HUGE numbers and the results have been nothing but positive, the kw is medium in terms of comp, has around 6k monthly searches
it went a little like this in under 2 weeks... #14 - #13 - #10 and its now sitting at #5, so i think that says a lot and these were huge blasts but they were varied in type and consistent......