[kj] ChartAttack review

[Jason Bishop]

Why dont we hear much of the "Outside the Gate" tracks, they are fairly 
upbeat?/

Alex Smith wrote:

>Not sure I'd ever refer to "Love Like Blood" and/or "Eighties" as "upbeat."
>
>Alex in NYC
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: death wish <dwish2000 at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Dec 8, 2005 3:07 PM
>To: gathering at misera.net
>Subject: [kj] ChartAttack review
>
>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
>
>
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