[kj] Killing Joke: Manchester Albert Hall – live review (Louder The War)

[Paul]

https://louderthanwar.com/killing-joke-manchester-albert-hall-live-review/


*Killing Joke: Manchester Albert Hall – live review*By John Robb - April 5,
2022

[image: KJ1.jpg]

*Killing Joke*

*Manchester Albert Hall*
*April 4th 2022*
*Live Review*

*Fresh from interviewing Jaz Coleman here
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzD9KoRWsR8> John Robb checks out their
current tour and is blown away…*

Age doesn’t wither them – it invigorates them.

Setting the controls for the heart of the stun and deep into the decades of
an idiosyncratic trip, Killing Joke are at the height of their wizard
powers as they command the stage and pulverise the gathering with their
multi-layered Panzer power that is also full of rich texture and nuance.

Far beyond the madding crowd Killing Joke are out there on their own. Drawn
from all over the UK to West London’s decayed late seventies Bohemia they
were flung up in the debris of punk rock but were very much on their own
trip.  Never had four more unlikely people ended up in one band and somehow
made it work.

Tonight there is so much in there to process from the dark muddy
soundscapes of classical to the dance floor grooves of disco and funk to
the sonic exploration of the left-field to a youthful fixation with glam
rock’s tribal pounding simplicity to the diablo dance of the heavier droogs
like Led Zip and deep into the heart of darkness of rock with an added
potent twist of the adventures of post-punk offered by early PiL. Siphon
all these and you have the ballpark but they assimilated everything and
made it utterly their own.

Unique.

And yet in many ways Killing Joke remain the furthest extremity of pop
culture.

Weird, strange, heavy, monstrous and yet oddly pop.

Their live set in 2021 is a pulverising treat – the heaviest groove machine
on the planet – an all-enveloping test of perception that is also
infectious and hypnotic. In the creeping darkness there is a twisted and
dark matter pop and that’s what makes them really work.

You can also dance to Killing Joke – there is joy in the darkness. They are
the heaviest and most twisted funk band in the world. A rhythm section
driven by Paul Ferguson’s avalanche drums has a power and a tsunami groove
and is built to dance. The core to Killing Joke was always twisting the
darkness with these gargantuan grooves…a nod to War – the band and a nod to
war – the human condition if you like.

The onstage strange voodoo between these four alpha veterans melds into
something beyond. They are hewn from a strange rock and deliver a strange
roll. Despite their individual visions of just how this juggernaut should
be driven these four very disparate individuals have somehow managed to
remain not only in the same room but in the same unit.

Jaz Coleman is as totemic as ever. His recent serious illness and age has
not blighted his shamanic presence. He stalks the stage tiptoeing on the
apocalypse with his shuffle footed steps and his laser beam eyes staring
into the void delivering his vocals from behind a mop of fluffy hair. His
delivery switches from an intense claustrophobic cracked voice to a
curiously choir-like soaring beauty. His disgust at the ways things are
taps into the 21st-century malaise, his visions are apocalyptic and his
presence is all-pervading.

Stage left Geordie still rips those bizarre sounds from the same Scotty
Moore period Gretsch. Huge molten lava slivers of sound are impossible to
place. They make no sense – no other guitar player creates stuff like this.
He stands there, deceptively calm in the storm, as the twisted crescendos
of sound dance out of his guitar with each riff unzipped and twisted inside
out. Stage right Youth wanders around with his visor in place and draped in
his tour fatigues dealing out those rumbling bass lines that bring the funk
and the dub or play against the riff tsunami coming from Geordie. Somehow
he finds space in the dense sound to own.

The mystic power comes from Paul Ferguson – the astonishing drummer whose
constantly impressive patterns lead in so many of the songs. A powerful
drummer, his thunderous Valkyrie drumming is something to behold – it
sounds enormous and is constantly playing with all the different variations
of tribal pounding the toms around the constant kick drum – the dance floor
groove and power of Killing Joke is right here.

The four of them together create this unique strange voodoo – a weird
primitive force.

The set leans on many of the older standards like Love Like Blood, the
Wait, Pssyche, Requiem and Change and the high points peppered through
their long and curious history like the Death And Resurrection Show and
recent cuts like the great and telling I Am The Virus but in Killing Joke’s
cased this kinda works as these slabs of sound are totemic and still feel
like the future. Giant anthems from over the decades that are etched into
the gathering’s heart and soul. Heads bob back and forth as the audience
locks into their groove whilst some daring older gents are in the mosh pit
– their bodies will be regretting this physical assault and action the
morning after.

Killing Joke still breathes a fire dance into these decades-old songs,
songs that make more sense as the world goes more insane. They still update
this carrion catalogue with new anthems and the incoming new album have
never felt more urgent or timely.

The madness that they embraced, the madness that they warned about, the
madness that they dance to and the madness they turned into these twisted
songs has never sounded more urgent or more current.

As Pandemonium ends the set with is huge wall of dark sound shivering into
the high roof of the stunning Victoriana of the venue Killing Joke wander
off the stage looking almost as surpassed as anyone in the room at how
powerful their voodoo remains.
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