[kj] [KJ[ 20/04/2012 – Trezzo Sull’Adda “Live” Club - Italy (Gig Report)

[Rob Moss]

Brilliant report Luca

Thanks!


Seems like you quite liked it then? ;-)

On 22 Apr 2012, at 07:02, Luca Signorelli <lucasignorelli at alice.it> wrote:


> 

>> 20/04/2012 – Trezzo Sull’Adda “Live” Club (Gig Report)

>> 

>> The only KJ northern Italian live date for 2012 was not only held (again) in the Milan area – not exactly “typical” northern Italy – but also at the “Live Club” of Trezzo sull’Adda, who gets my vote for Italy’s most lugubrious and depressing live venue. Everything inside look put together almost in random fashion, and the minimalist décor just add to the feeling the band will play in the middle of nowhere. But despite being (literally) in the middle of nowhere, the club tonight gets filled very rapidly, as word of mouth about Killing Joke return to sunny Italy has been quite strong in the last few weeks. Thanks also to the great impression “MMXII”  (best KJ album in the last 20 years, my humble opinion) has made here. Tonight the crowd is a very nice mix of mature and very young, and the floor vibe is definitely better than 3 years ago at Milan’s “Rolling Stone” (when the “mature” side of the mix had been prevalent).

>> 

>> And the boys are back, and it was very nice to see them again. They don’t have aged aged in the last 3 years, and while Jaz is looking a bit tired, he’s fiery and articulate as usual. I sense the tour has been quite some work so far, with a lot of interesting human interaction inside the band (which means yelling, fighting, arguing, laughing and arguing again – the usual). Check Youth’s blog for more inside stories about this, and I bet the next few entries will make for some fun reading. There’s a lot of pressure put on the crew by the band, but they’re all nice people, and the soundman (John?) did a great job tonight. So, it looks like there’s all the right kind of tension here, and very little of the boring, deadbeat shit (except, of course, the bus transfers, which the band hates).  I anticipate a very entertaining night, but I’m  bit worried about the setlist (which I understand is being changed a bit every night). It is “MMXXII” heavy, and most of the old stuff comes from the first album – and no “What’s This For”! How will the crowd react.

>> 

>> I shouldn’t have worried, because something akin to a miracle happens – namely, the crowd reacts a lot more to the NEW stuff that they do with the classics. It helps the news stuff is the strongest new material the band has written in a long time. But if anyone had told me I would have lived too see people getting apeshit crazy for the material of the latest and 15th album of a band currently in its 32nd year of career… but, ok, this is not “any band”, this is Killing Joke, and my unshakable faith in their music has some very good reason. The club PA is muddy as hell and be cursed laws regulating volumes on live gigs, but – as I’ve mentioned before – the mix is very nice, and they boys are putting a lot of energy into this show. They start slow (“Requiem” is solemn, but hardly a scorcher) but oh boy, they really warm up fast, and by the middle of the show – with “Chop Chop”, an  underrated classic, getting a blistering rendition – they’ve REALLY shifted into full gear. The “Killing Joke effect” then kicks in – everything start magically to connect and make sense, blood is pulsing in your temples, head shaking, legs moving has they had a life by themselves. And – again: it feels so RELEVANT, so much like a soundtrack for our day and age. Some people think they were far ahead of their times 30 years ago, and now their time has come, but my own sentiment is far simpler – they’ve ALWAYS been in tune with their own time. Particularly live, they’ve this marvelous ability to underscore the mood of a age: scary and violent between 1979 and 1983, bombastic and glittering during the 80’s, elusive and moody in the 90’s, convulsive and confused during the “noughties”, and now, appropriately apocalyptic and sombre, but at the same time channeling a heightened mix anticipation and fear. Even “Asteroid”, a song I normally don’t care much for,  felt different tonight, and I sang it with the crowd.

>> 

>> However, while the new song made the definite core of tonight gig, it must be said that the final handful of classics (Wait, Psyche, Wardance and a brutal Pandemonium) put the evening close to a real orgasmic frenzy. I was in Geneva in 1983 for the legendary “bomb shelter concert” (the one from whom the final “torchbearers” bit of the “Eighties” original video taken), and nothing will ever compare to that night (maybe, who knows). But I must say that, with the possible exception of Meshuggah in a good night, nothing still compares to Killing Joke live (and even Meshuggah on a good night just approach KJ level, they don't really get there).

>> 

>> And from the satisfied faces of some very young crowd members at the end of the gig, I must say it wasn’t just the self satisfied musing of a old Killing Joke fan. Even if, while driving into the night back to Turin, I had to admit to myself that to be a old Killing Joke fan these days feels really good.

>> 

>> LS

> 

> _______________________________________________

> Gathering mailing list

> Gathering at misera.net

> http://four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/gathering