Perhaps to this day very few Killing Joke listeners have understood the definitive instruction hidden within an album of overall conceptual destruction.
Killing Joke’s MMXII (“2012”) LP came out a couple of months ago, featuring the band’s original late 1970s lineup. As one might expect, it was a fiery and apocalyptic mix of their singular metal-punk hybrid, with strong darkwave and postpunk overtones. The LP will surely be, in retrospect, one of 2012’s best. And Killing Joke still remain a singular animal in the world of music, somehow straddling many genres yet belonging to none of them.
Countless are the number of bands, from crust bands like Amebix, to metal bands like Metallica, to industrial bands like Godflesh, to postpunk bands like 1919, that have cited the Joke as a seminal influence. Their influence even threads through the current black metal and crust scenes; Das Oath and Behemoth have both covered the band. That Killing Joke, who originally toured with Joy Division (and even featured Joy Division/New Order bassist Peter Hook in a brief lineup) is still going, with the original members no less, is nothing short of incredible. They have explored many styles throughout their varied catalog, covering punk, goth, metal, crust, and industrial — and everything in between.
This is a salute to Killing Joke’s 33+ year legacy, which is still going strong. They have concerts coming up in the Fall with The Cult and Mission UK. Here’s a trip through Killing Joke’s catalog, highlighting the high points in their career.
This is the seminal proto-metal-punk crossover song off Killing Joke’s debut, self-titled LP from 1980 – “The Wait.” Metallica covered it 6 years after its release. It still packs a punch:
One year before “The Wait,” however, Killing Joke recorded — in 1979 — this lean and mean version of “War Dance” for John Peel. It also features a slogging, downtuned guitar, mixed with a relentless drum pattern:
Killing Joke’s very first song was a straight-up Clash/Stranglers style ’77 punk rocker, “Are You Receiving?” which is below:
In 1981 the band released What’s THIS For…!, containing this seminal bit of percussion-heavy “Southern Stomp” that was popular at goth clubs and at the Batcave club (as their records show!), at that time.
In 1982 the band retired to Berlin, Germany, to record their experimental postpunk LP Revelations. “We Have Joy” came from those sessions:
Shortly after this, in 1983, the band recorded an EP’s worth of material that would include “New Day,” “Willful Days,” and “Me or You.” This is the latter song, which is almost New Model Army-ish:
In 1983, the Fire Dances LP came out. This garage stomper of a song was on it, performed here live on England’s the Tube to devastating effect:
Soon Killing Joke would be tracking back to their goth influences, and in 1985 released the gothic rock masterpiece “Love Like Blood,” a gloomy romantic song that featured martial overtones. It came out on their 5th LP, 1985’s Nighttime. The song remains, to this day, the very definition of “European darkwave.”
After the 1986 new wave dance floor opus Brighter Than a Thousand Suns and the embarrassing Outside the Gate, Killing Joke made a fiery comeback with the Extremities, Dirt, and Various Repressed Emotions LP in 1990. “Money is Not Our God” is just one of many raging classics on this LP, which featured Martin Atkins of PIL on drums:
After the 1993 industrial-metal Pandemonium LP, which garnered respect from bands like Fear Factory and saw Killing Joke bassist Paul Raven going off to play with Ministry, another band that was also exploring the industrial-metal sounds that were happening at that time, in 1996 Killing Joke came back again with Democracy.
And this song, “Another Bloody Election,” still relevant today. “Rupert Murdoch cares for orphans / McDonalds goes eco-friendly / I’m cynical of you.” Jesus, those lyrics could be written today; yet they were written 15 years ago!
An abortive LP was planned for 2000 or so. Some demos exist. Like this one. “Future Shock,” which I think is awesome:
A few years go by and the core Killing Joke members of Jaz Coleman (vocals) and Geordie (guitar) team up with Andy Gill of Gang of Four and make the 2003, second self-titled LP. They get Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo-Fighters to play drums. It’s a very political, metal LP, reflecting the Bush-era Iraq War zeitgeist. That is what this song, “Total Invasion,” is about:
In 2006 Killing Joke came back with a decidedly low-fi, crust-as-fuck double-LP masterpiece, Hosannas from the Basements of Hell, recorded in a basement in Prague, Czechoslavakia. This is when the band’s music finally “clicked” for me, personally, as up ’til then I had been listening to a lot of Tragedy and Wolfbrigade and Pisschrist and Born Dead Icons. Suddenly, Killing Joke made sense. I began my backwards journey through their catalog after I heard Hosannas from the Basements of Hell.
“This Tribal Antidote,” however, kicks off the epic 2006 LP.
And the title song of 2006’s Hosannas is a d-beat rager that combines the forward thrust of Venom’s “Sons of Satan” with The Mob (in the chorus). To wit:
The Japanese CD version of Hosannas came with this bonus track, an epic metal masterpiece featuring Lovecraftian lyrics (“And that which is not dead will eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die.”)
Although the young Ben Calvert had done a great job drumming — d-beating, even! — for Killing Joke from 2005-2008, everyone was glad to see the original, 1979 lineup come back together, with drummer Big Paul Ferguson, and bassist Youth, for 2010’s Absolute Dissent, a raw yet rocking masterpiece of postpunk Saturnalia. “Endgame” further fleshed out the Motorhead and d-beat inclinations of the band:
And that brings us to the present: Killing Joke’s MMXII LP, still with the original lineup, and this song, “Pole Shift,” that refers to an apocalyptic Mayan prophecy that on December 21, 2012, the Earth’s poles will shift, casting everyone off into space, and to their death (as recently portrayed on a TD Ameritrade advertisement):
You can buy Killing Joke’s new MMXII LP here.
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