An Old Joke Still Killing: Killing Joke

I love it when old guys deliver. And here Killing Jokes ships like a meth-smoking Flying Dutchmen on 11.

A brief history: British, formed in 1978, often credited with being the instigators of what’d become known as industrial. Their early albums featured tribal drumming, guitar slabs on repeat, simple grooves, and singer Jaz Coleman’s distinctive roar which often seemed to operate beyond the redline. He seemed capable of massive vocal bursts that could’ve been sculpted on a cheese grater. They were, and are as you’ll note below, if nothing else, intense.

Fifty-eight year old, New Zealand-born Coleman (his mother is half Bengali) has been known to have some, er, interesting worldly notions. He left music behind in 1982 to go to Iceland and wait out the impending asteroid apocalypse. During the time away he’d also study serious classical composing. Later, he’d work with “some of the world’s leading orchestras.” He’d also become an ordained priest and a father of three daughters. After touring the U.S. many times, he has come to see Americans as the obese, food doped, crippled with short attention spans, dumbed-down, and unfocused passive zombies that we are. He also says computers are killing the future’s potential great minds.

Fair enough.

The 2015 version of Killing Joke flexes a sound of brutal guitar hammering and insistent ruthless drumming. It’s a groove fit for slamming on the dance floor. And that voice: When he says “I am the virus,” you will believe. So clamp on the headphones and prepare for five minutes of an aural apocalypse you won’t regret.