[kj] ChartAttack review

[fatpotanga]

Cool - thanx for posting this  :)

Flat Potato


On 8/12/05 20:07, "death wish" wrote:

> Killing Joke Can Still Laugh 25 Years Into Their Career
> Wednesday December 07, 2005 @ 06:30 PM
> By: ChartAttack.com Staff
> 
> 
> Killing Joke
> 
> Back in the '80s, Killing Joke gained popularity ˜ albeit in an
> "alternative" way ˜ with reasonably upbeat pop songs such as "Love Like
> Blood" and "Eighties." KJ fans, sometimes known as "The Gatherers," know
> there's a lot more to the British band than the Weird Science soundtrack
> would indicate.
> 
> Killing Joke came screaming out of London in 1979 with a blast of
> industro-metal mayhem, strange tribal rhythms and the doom 'n' gloom
> wordplay of vocalist Jaz Coleman. The band's history is peppered with
> unusual tales and events ˜ an interest in the occult, bursts of violence,
> living in Iceland and relocating to Prague, to name a few.
> 
> Yet Killing Joke have survived, and not as a waning, aging unit performing
> past hits at casino shows. Twenty-six years later, the band are actively
> playing and recording. Their quarter-century mark was celebrated by
> anniversary shows in London that were captured for more than just posterity
> on a new DVD called XXV Gathering!.
> 
> "We ran into the guys from [Enliven Entertainment] up in Montreal," explains
> bassist Paul Raven. "They did Disaster Pieces for Slipknot, and we fuckin'
> love that DVD ˜ it was shot well, well-edited, well-put-together.
> 
> "I'm like, 'Well, let's see what these guys can do for us ˜ see if they can
> make a bunch of fuckin' old punk granddads look cool.'"
> 
> The band chose to release the DVD, and a live album, "warts and all." But
> the warts are easily overlooked due to the quality of their performance.
> Instead of paining over post-production tweaking, they chose to approach the
> DVD as a way to simply capture the atmosphere and the celebration as it was
> happening. To help them choose a set list ˜ no easy task, considering their
> longevity ˜ they went to The Gatherers for suggestions, which is indicative
> of the band's rapport with their fans.
> 
> Killing Joke have also just finished mastering their new Hosannahs From The
> Basements Of Hell album, which will be released the first week of March. "In
> some ways it's like the best parts of our favourite elements of Killing Joke
> history, musically," Raven says of the album.
> 
> "Being in Prague, all living in the same place ˜ living and breathing and
> eating and shitting and sleeping together ˜ it's all just been much more
> cohesive this time."
> 
> Raven describes the new material as being slightly different than the
> group's previous work, with an audible element of Middle Eastern music and a
> few tracks with strings (Coleman has recently begun conducting for various
> orchestras). Lyrically, the album finds a different tone as well.
> 
> "It's not so doom-laden as a lot of the stuff that we do," Raven says. "It's
> a little bit more 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and have a good time
> now before it all goes fucking face down,' you know."
> 
> It's not hard to believe, speaking with the jovial musician, that the band
> aren't as dour as popular opinion might have you believe. They have plenty
> of reason to be positive these days, with a quarter-century behind them, a
> new album on the horizon and a new shot of vitality via the presence of new
> drummer Benny Calvert. As a result, the band have no plans to slow down in
> the foreseeable future. "We're going to do it until the fucking wheels drop
> off, and that's it," says Raven, who's currently in El Paso, Texas recording
> the new Ministry album with Al Jourgensen.
> 
> "I think a big part of longevity with Killing Joke is we got a lot of love
> for one another, we really do, and that's something that is very thin on the
> ground in bands. Usually people sell each other down the street for a
> fucking six-pack. When things are at their absolute worst, we just grin at
> each other and smoke a cigar, normally.
> 
> "Then we always have drugs and crime to turn to if things get real bad."
> 
> ˜James Tennant
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gathering mailing list
> Gathering at misera.net
> http://four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/gathering

ƒ^†pº†^~g^


-- 
“If dinosaurs became extinct millions of years ago, how do people know what
they were called...?”
Mrs Fatpotanga, in a moment of unparalleled stupidity.