[kj] [KJ[ 20/04/2012 – Trezzo Sull’Adda “Live” Club - Italy (Gig Report)

[jpwhkj at aol.com]

Excellent, thoughtful, well-written, passionate review.

Jamie



-----Original Message-----
From: Luca Signorelli <lucasignorelli at alice.it>
To: A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!) <gathering at misera.net>
Sent: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 7:08
Subject: Re: [kj] [KJ[ 20/04/2012 – Trezzo Sull’Adda “Live” Club - Italy (Gig Report)



 20/04/2012 – Trezzo Sull’Adda “Live” Club (Gig Report)

 The only KJ northern Italian live date for 2012 was not only held 
 (again) in the Milan area – not exactly “typical” northern Italy – but 
 also at the “Live Club” of Trezzo sull’Adda, who gets my vote for 
 Italy’s most lugubrious and depressing live venue. Everything inside 
 look put together almost in random fashion, and the minimalist décor 
 just add to the feeling the band will play in the middle of nowhere. 
 But despite being (literally) in the middle of nowhere, the club 
 tonight gets filled very rapidly, as word of mouth about Killing Joke 
 return to sunny Italy has been quite strong in the last few weeks. 
 Thanks also to the great impression “MMXII”  (best KJ album in the 
 last 20 years, my humble opinion) has made here. Tonight the crowd is 
 a very nice mix of mature and very young, and the floor vibe is 
 definitely better than 3 years ago at Milan’s “Rolling Stone” (when 
 the “mature” side of the mix had been prevalent).

 And the boys are back, and it was very nice to see them again. They 
 don’t have aged aged in the last 3 years, and while Jaz is looking a 
 bit tired, he’s fiery and articulate as usual. I sense the tour has 
 been quite some work so far, with a lot of interesting human 
 interaction inside the band (which means yelling, fighting, arguing, 
 laughing and arguing again – the usual). Check Youth’s blog for more 
 inside stories about this, and I bet the next few entries will make 
 for some fun reading. There’s a lot of pressure put on the crew by the 
 band, but they’re all nice people, and the soundman (John?) did a 
 great job tonight. So, it looks like there’s all the right kind of 
 tension here, and very little of the boring, deadbeat shit (except, of 
 course, the bus transfers, which the band hates).  I anticipate a very 
 entertaining night, but I’m  bit worried about the setlist (which I 
 understand is being changed a bit every night). It is “MMXXII” heavy, 
 and most of the old stuff comes from the first album – and no “What’s 
 This For”! How will the crowd react.

 I shouldn’t have worried, because something akin to a miracle happens 
 – namely, the crowd reacts a lot more to the NEW stuff that they do 
 with the classics. It helps the news stuff is the strongest new 
 material the band has written in a long time. But if anyone had told 
 me I would have lived too see people getting apeshit crazy for the 
 material of the latest and 15th album of a band currently in its 32nd 
 year of career… but, ok, this is not “any band”, this is Killing Joke, 
 and my unshakable faith in their music has some very good reason. The 
 club PA is muddy as hell and be cursed laws regulating volumes on live 
 gigs, but – as I’ve mentioned before – the mix is very nice, and they 
 boys are putting a lot of energy into this show. They start slow 
 (“Requiem” is solemn, but hardly a scorcher) but oh boy, they really 
 warm up fast, and by the middle of the show – with “Chop Chop”, an  
 underrated classic, getting a blistering rendition – they’ve REALLY 
 shifted into full gear. The “Killing Joke effect” then kicks in – 
 everything start magically to connect and make sense, blood is pulsing 
 in your temples, head shaking, legs moving has they had a life by 
 themselves. And – again: it feels so RELEVANT, so much like a 
 soundtrack for our day and age. Some people think they were far ahead 
 of their times 30 years ago, and now their time has come, but my own 
 sentiment is far simpler – they’ve ALWAYS been in tune with their own 
 time. Particularly live, they’ve this marvelous ability to underscore 
 the mood of a age: scary and violent between 1979 and 1983, bombastic 
 and glittering during the 80’s, elusive and moody in the 90’s, 
 convulsive and confused during the “noughties”, and now, appropriately 
 apocalyptic and sombre, but at the same time channeling a heightened 
 mix anticipation and fear. Even “Asteroid”, a song I normally don’t 
 care much for,  felt different tonight, and I sang it with the crowd.

 However, while the new song made the definite core of tonight gig, it 
 must be said that the final handful of classics (Wait, Psyche, 
 Wardance and a brutal Pandemonium) put the evening close to a real 
 orgasmic frenzy. I was in Geneva in 1983 for the legendary “bomb 
 shelter concert” (the one from whom the final “torchbearers” bit of 
 the “Eighties” original video taken), and nothing will ever compare to 
 that night (maybe, who knows). But I must say that, with the possible 
 exception of Meshuggah in a good night, nothing still compares to 
 Killing Joke live (and even Meshuggah on a good night just approach KJ 
 level, they don't really get there).

 And from the satisfied faces of some very young crowd members at the 
 end of the gig, I must say it wasn’t just the self satisfied musing of 
 a old Killing Joke fan. Even if, while driving into the night back to 
 Turin, I had to admit to myself that to be a old Killing Joke fan 
 these days feels really good.

 LS
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