Killing Joke

Reissues SPINEFARM

Honour the fire! Two Joke zeniths get double vinyled, while singles get quadruply collected.

Nothing else makes a noise quite like Killing Joke. Co-founding drummer Paul Ferguson once famously decribed it as “the sound of the earth vomiting”. But it’s more seismic than that. You can ask yourself where it came from all you like, intellectualise over the socio-political backdrop from whence it emerged or individual band members’ formative musical influences (be they classical, dub, Floyd, punk or Chic) until you’re nauseous, but the sound of Killing Joke is way beyond human understanding. It just is.

Listening back to their self-titled debut of 1980 (10/10), the first question your assaulted psyche wants answered is which auteur producer coaxed this extraordinary titanic roar from the four largely untried musicians? Steve Lillywhite? Chris Thomas? Lee Perry? Astonishingly, they did it themselves. On first hearing, you don’t question Requiem, it simply rolls over you like breaking surf. It’s a physical, visceral thing. You can’t stroke your chin over the inner workings of Wardance, you’re too busy having your inner primitive reanimated. But, 40 years later, as you cock an analytical ear to KJ’s latest painstaking cut, its very existence seems entirely unlikely.

In 1980, nobody played guitar like Geordie, no guitarist sounded like Geordie.

The tribal immensity of Big Paul’s drums and Youth’s foundation-threatening dub bass certainly existed elsewhere, but not in rock, post-punk or otherwise. And Jaz Coleman…. That voice? Lydon’s and Strummer’s were stylised ferocity; Coleman’s froze blood.

The intrinsic KJ sound remains ageless, another benefit of being born fully formed. It’s never had to develop terribly far, it’s always dwelt on the outer limits, the brink, never quite in fashion, never quite out.

But there have been occasions when the planets have aligned and they’ve intensified their art accordingly. Partially recorded in the King’s Chamber of The Great Pyramid at Giza, 1994’s Pandemonium (9/10), especially its title track, is Killing Joke in excelsis. Everything’s turned up to ‘huge’. Coleman spits and spews his Exorcism as Geordie appears to rip actual flesh from his Gibson ES-295. And Millennium? Immense. Pandemonium is an absent Ferguson short of perfection.

Both of these defining KJ classics have been re-pressed across double vinyl in honour of the band’s 40th anniversary, while their equally essential The Singles Collection 1979-2012 (9/10) re-emerges as a weighty quadruple set. And, frankly, you’d be a fool not to.