[kj] Times gig review.

[nicholas fitzpatrick]

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Limited
The Times (London)

February 28, 2005, Monday

HEADLINE: Killing Joke

BYLINE: David Sinclair

BODY:
Killing Joke. Shepherds Bush Empire, W12. ***.

AFTER their latest hiatus in a 25-year career, Killing Joke returned with a 
show of daunting extremes. Their business affairs may be in permanent flux, 
but they remain masters of a miscreant strand of apocalyptic rock'n'roll 
that has influenced artists from Nirvana to Slipknot.

Radiating an air of ageless malevolence, they took to the stage on Thursday 
with a typical flourish. While the guitarist Geordie, bass player Raven and 
drummer Ben Calvert hammered out the thunderous, martial rhythm of 
Communion, the singer Jaz Coleman arrived bearing a huge cross on a pole. 
Dressed in a black boiler suit, his face painted blood red, and with his 
bulging eyes peering out from great welts of charcoal make-up, he roared the 
chorus -"All who die" -as if exhorting an army of the damned into some last 
great mythical battle.

Ramping up both tempo and volume, they launched into Wardance. As Geordie 
carved great wodges of sound out of his big, hollow-bodied guitar and 
Calvert slammed his tom-toms with frenzied movements, it became clear that 
the veneer of co operation between the musicians masked a violent power 
struggle.

With the demagogic Coleman ranting and foaming, his body quivering as if in 
the grip of a seizure, the battle to see who could make the most impact was 
joined on all fronts, including the sound engineer, whose efforts to balance 
all the instruments seemed to lead, with each successive number, to more of 
everything.

For a while they maintained an unbelievable pitch of intensity that peaked 
with a sequence at the end of Frenzy, when Coleman, illuminated by a 
flashing strobe, seemed about to shake himself apart, while the musical 
sequence accelerated to a speed that surely approached the limits of what is 
humanly possible.

But having reached this moment of supreme existential agony, they had also 
arrived at the point of no return. With the volume now well over the pain 
threshold, and the lighting engineer joining in with a visual cacophony of 
blinding flashes and chaotic, swirling spots, the contours of the show 
became increasingly blurred and melodrama gradually gave way to monotony.

Coleman delivered a brief, troubled monologue about killing sparrows before 
Bloodsport and outlined the group's plan to record their next album in 
various war zones. But if their energy was not entirely spent by the time 
they navigated a rambling sequence of encores, including Sun Goes Down, Are 
You Receiving? and Pandemonium, your reviewer's enthusiasm most certainly 
was.