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.

Killing Joke: Asteroid (live)

I've a theory as to why musical tastes tend to change with age. That is, why as we scale up in age do our music choices tend to mellow down? The reason, as I've unscientifically concluded, is that as noise in our lives increases — career, marriage, mortgage, kids, etc. — the less we want it in our diversions. I think this goes a long way in explaining the popularity of banalities such as Twilight and Barry Manilow. But mellowing down doesn't have to be all vanilla. Even though I'm now on the ripe side of middle age myself I can't imagine how senile I'd have to be to enjoy, say, Rod Stewart's diddling over of The Great American Songbook. Or to book passage on the next Air Supply cruise. Take the "a" and "t" from adult and you're left with dull (then add another "l"), but it doesn't have to be that way.



E.g.: Killing Joke, a relic from my post-adolescent musical formation of '78 - '81 (after that they continued without me). For those who don't know, Killing Joke is considered one of the fathers of Industrial and is an admitted influence on many bands that followed (Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Ministry, Jane's Addiction), including metal (Metallica, Tool). Interestingly, Asteroid was originally recorded during a more recent reforming when remaining original members ages were deep into pattern baldness and middle age spread. Grease-painted vocalist Jaz Coleman — already wearing a precursor of his retiree's jumpsuit — became an ordained minister in 2003. (KJ songs are larded up with scriptural references.) His ordainment followed periods of dabbling in Alister Crowley and the occult. In the early 80s he convinced other band members to join him in Iceland to wait out the impending apocalypse. (That's all right, Jesus missed that call too.)
If this latter day sound is also Industrial then it's of the most wizened and vintage variety. Asteroid is repetitive and coarse, transgressive is the word reviewers used, like a buzz saw ripping through 24 gauge steel. Yet, somehow all that bash comes out remarkably hypnotic as well — kinetically so, if that's possible. (That phrase may be as oxymoronic as "High-impact Yoga" but you get the idea.) What works for my ears is the intensity of the sound; I don't believe there's another sound in the universe that quite conveys what only an overdriven guitar and a vocal with that kind of force thickened rasp can. Our emotional soundtracks aren't all violins and twee singer-songwriters huddled over acoustic guitars. Killing Joke's sound is a great symbol of the working life: Coarse, repetitive, droning, and yet with a kind of stuttering rhythmic balance. Maybe it's the fact that it's a sound pounded out by guys with AARP cards (like me) that speaks so well to me. (Although, judging from audience's young faces, the sound isn't limited to an age group.)

And maybe it's the touch of humanity within. Hear the plaint in Colemen's shout; He may be singing about the world's demise but he's not quite ready yet (as none of us are ever likely to be). I'd guess he's no more ready now then he was when he ducked into the Land of Trolls.

In conclusion: The sound may travel in a clenched fist but it arrives with an open hand.