The Strange and Talented Days of Killing Joke

This is a band not for the faint of heart, not for the uncommitted. They will raise you up/take you down, amaze you/daze you, and never cease to craze you. Maybe that is the killing joke. If it is, I am in on it.

Instigated in a fire ritual of the occult, the members formed in London, there were early gigs playing support for Joy Division, later they scored an unlikely and never repeated 80’s hit. They soon abandoned the mainstream and have been left of the dial ever since. The members have found success in many side projects, collectively they are name-checked by many of the most successful alternative ninety’s bands. They had Dave Grohl step in, to drum on a mid-career album as a favour.

All in all, you could not make up this band’s history. You could not find a more unlikely band of brothers. A band who come together to create not just a live set, but a happening of transcendental darkness, and a gathering of souls whenever they play together.

Seeing them live was a long time waiting for me. Whilst band leader Jaz Coleman has some New Zealand connections and was a regular visitor to his Cythera island, it was not until June 14, 2013, that the band landed and played the major centres. More on that night soon.

When did I first discover them? Early on, the second album (now a 40-year anniversary) and its stark foreboding cover artwork: What’s This For attracted my attention and kept my ongoing interest. Songs like ‘Tension’, ‘Unspeakable’ and ‘Follow the Leaders’ with taut guitar, tribal rhythms, and menacing vocals, were a pathway to some other world and experience.

Who are they? Killing Joke primarily exists as the original and current line-up of Jaz Coleman (vocals, keys), Kevin ‘Geordie ’Walker (Guitar), ‘Big Paul’ Ferguson (Drums), and ‘Youth’ AKA Martin Glover (Bass). For a period (1982–1990) Youth left and Paul Raven was there on bass, including the album Night Time and the sublime ‘Love Like Blood’ single. Sadly, Paul died in 2007 and is memorialized in the Killing Joke lexicon by ‘The Raven King’ in Jaz’s orchestral work.

This is no ordinary group of individuals and they have a body of work amassed across a range of arts. Jaz a musical renaissance man of powerful intellect, (sometimes wayward) who not only mastered rock music composition and performance, produced other bands (including New Zealand’s Shihad) but also self-taught himself classical composition for orchestra, delivered his opus string and choral work in 2019: ‘Magna Invocatio, A Gnostic Mass for Choir and Orchestra’ which outstandingly reworked Killing Joke compositions into orchestrated wonder with the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. That is the just singer.

Bass player Youth is an ‘A’ league producer to many mainstream and left of the dial artists, a dub maestro (see his dub remix of KJ tracks on ‘In Dub’), a DJ of renown, and unlike his band mates Prince of Darkness robing, he attires in bright casuals, more Ibiza warmth than Icelandic cool. He has also recently previewed his classical opus ‘Symphony for the End of the World’ with the Syrian National Orchestra, citing it as the singular high of his life’s work. Add to that illustrious production credits with: Edwyn Collins guitar thumping ‘A Girl Like You’, The Cult guitar riff song from another world ‘She Sells Sanctuary’, The Verve and ‘Urban Hymns’. Without mentioning Paul McCartney, Heather Nova, and New Zealand’s Crowded House ….

Second bass Paul Raven was a brooding musician of renown, featuring later in a number of bands including Ministry. He had two stints with KJ, including the successful brace of: Fire Dances, Night Time and Brighter than a Thousand Suns; returning later for two late nineties albums, and sealing his place in their history.

Whilst drummer Paul Ferguson has a few musical side-lines he is also involved in forging jewelry from the arts of a blacksmith (Boneyard Jewelry). Now in 2021 he has music out under his Big Paul Ferguson moniker. He also took time out from KJ from time to time letting in super subs Dave Grohl and Martin Atkins (PIL).

Finally, there is the enigma of Geordie, the quiet one, who seemingly has a public persona of nonchalant guitar genius which had been the envy and influence of the rock extremities of both Metallica and Nirvana; and little else is known about him off stage. On stage he has a both relaxed and stoic stance from where he conjures up a body of guitar riffs to rival any other visitor to the riff vault. He is always with his signature Gibson ES-295, the big hollow bodied special. Somehow this disparate group of talented individuals came together to make and compose sounds that no others would or could.

There is even a post punk super group of Killing Joke/Joy Division with KJ members Jaz and Geordie with JD’s Peter Hook teaming up as KD93 (AKA Killing Division). Much mooted and talked about since that year of recording in 1993, the tapes finally came out this year. Check out ‘Remembrance Day’ on the Spotify list below.

Back again to 2013, it is an odd thing as an individual to go back the thirty odd years to the 1980’s with a punko/gothic/guitar/keys … you have never seen live, and it has been awhile since you last took their songs for a spin. My bloody oath you can! My mate and I met in a nearby craft ale bar for a warmup and a yarn about the old days, looking forward, expectant but weathered enough and experienced to be measured. We began the wander up to the late and lamented Bar Bodega venue, alongside an ever-increasing wave of black clad males moving the same way. This is the way, step inside. Inside we went. Sorted for ales we were at the altar of the ultimate alternative act.

What could they do to impress us as a set starter: Requiem, War Dance, Love Like Blood, three of their best and well known, all in the first five songs. What band would start like that? Massive drums and bass, with riff-skating guitar leading the way and keys to the side. Above all the black robed, black haired, manic goth-master Jaz holding court and bringing it all to centre, in what can only be described as an ‘anti-priest like shaman. Alongside were Geordie on guitar, Youth on Bass making up the front line. Backed by a young drummer filling in for Big Paul, and a touring keyboard player. Surely, they could not maintain and continue such an onslaught on a dark, cold, winter, Wellington night. Or could they? The guitar riffs kept coming as a wave of sound from the stage, rolling out across the audience, the songs kept forming and Jaz keeps court in a way no other front man, not possessed by many shades of darkness could, black clothes from toe to head and messianic bearing as he lived each lyric. You were lifted, elevated, and transported to a church not made of hands for a time … a gathering like no other.

What will be the Killing joke legacy? They leave behind the anthem like best FU song in ‘You’ll Never Get to Me’, the pulsating ‘Follow the Leaders’, ‘Eighties’ (which inspired the debt repaid by Dave Grohl), the magnificent ‘In Excelsis’ and the finding the end of the world: ‘In Cythera’. Add to that the aforementioned ‘Love Like Blood’ that in lyric, in music, in video leaves them in the pantheon of greats. Even in 2015 they were ahead of the game with ‘I am the Virus’. There is of course more to come. Beware though, as I warned, this is not a band for the faint of heart, if you dare, check out their film, ‘The Death and Resurrection Show’ where their love of the occult and otherworldly interests is given full flourish. Their intent is pure, their intellect intently interesting, their music, uplifting and magnificent. I can only give you a Killing Joke. A band like no other.