[kj] ChartAttack review

[death wish]

Killing Joke Can Still Laugh 25 Years Into Their Career
Wednesday December 07, 2005 @ 06:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff


Killing Joke

Back in the '80s, Killing Joke gained popularity — albeit in an 
"alternative" way — with reasonably upbeat pop songs such as "Love Like 
Blood" and "Eighties." KJ fans, sometimes known as "The Gatherers," know 
there's a lot more to the British band than the Weird Science soundtrack 
would indicate.

Killing Joke came screaming out of London in 1979 with a blast of 
industro-metal mayhem, strange tribal rhythms and the doom 'n' gloom 
wordplay of vocalist Jaz Coleman. The band's history is peppered with 
unusual tales and events — an interest in the occult, bursts of violence, 
living in Iceland and relocating to Prague, to name a few.

Yet Killing Joke have survived, and not as a waning, aging unit performing 
past hits at casino shows. Twenty-six years later, the band are actively 
playing and recording. Their quarter-century mark was celebrated by 
anniversary shows in London that were captured for more than just posterity 
on a new DVD called XXV Gathering!.

"We ran into the guys from [Enliven Entertainment] up in Montreal," explains 
bassist Paul Raven. "They did Disaster Pieces for Slipknot, and we fuckin' 
love that DVD — it was shot well, well-edited, well-put-together.

"I'm like, 'Well, let's see what these guys can do for us — see if they can 
make a bunch of fuckin' old punk granddads look cool.'"

The band chose to release the DVD, and a live album, "warts and all." But 
the warts are easily overlooked due to the quality of their performance. 
Instead of paining over post-production tweaking, they chose to approach the 
DVD as a way to simply capture the atmosphere and the celebration as it was 
happening. To help them choose a set list — no easy task, considering their 
longevity — they went to The Gatherers for suggestions, which is indicative 
of the band's rapport with their fans.

Killing Joke have also just finished mastering their new Hosannahs From The 
Basements Of Hell album, which will be released the first week of March. "In 
some ways it's like the best parts of our favourite elements of Killing Joke 
history, musically," Raven says of the album.

"Being in Prague, all living in the same place — living and breathing and 
eating and shitting and sleeping together — it's all just been much more 
cohesive this time."

Raven describes the new material as being slightly different than the 
group's previous work, with an audible element of Middle Eastern music and a 
few tracks with strings (Coleman has recently begun conducting for various 
orchestras). Lyrically, the album finds a different tone as well.

"It's not so doom-laden as a lot of the stuff that we do," Raven says. "It's 
a little bit more 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and have a good time 
now before it all goes fucking face down,' you know."

It's not hard to believe, speaking with the jovial musician, that the band 
aren't as dour as popular opinion might have you believe. They have plenty 
of reason to be positive these days, with a quarter-century behind them, a 
new album on the horizon and a new shot of vitality via the presence of new 
drummer Benny Calvert. As a result, the band have no plans to slow down in 
the foreseeable future. "We're going to do it until the fucking wheels drop 
off, and that's it," says Raven, who's currently in El Paso, Texas recording 
the new Ministry album with Al Jourgensen.

"I think a big part of longevity with Killing Joke is we got a lot of love 
for one another, we really do, and that's something that is very thin on the 
ground in bands. Usually people sell each other down the street for a 
fucking six-pack. When things are at their absolute worst, we just grin at 
each other and smoke a cigar, normally.

"Then we always have drugs and crime to turn to if things get real bad."

—James Tennant