[kj] ChartAttack review

[Jiri]

Thanks for posting...

As always, Raven makes for an entertaining interview/quote machine.

death wish wrote:

> 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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