Killing Joke - Killing Joke 1980

Flying in the face of the skinny tied new romantics and the easy listening pleasantness new wave bands were dishing out.    Taking the synthesizer sound from their contemporaries “Requiem” and “Tomorrow’s World” gently lull a listener in.  Precision-steady factory worker repetitiveness bangs in “Bloodsport”.   But Killing Joke also marries the sound with primitive tribal rythms soundtracking an oncoming apocalyptical disaster in “The Wait” Warning of impending doom is “The Wait” “Wardance” is bouncy bass driven abrasive affair completed with Jaz’s grizzle-grunt vocals.   Synthesizers drive “Complications”and “Primitive” hiding a dark undercurrent in the driving industrial rythm. The synthesizers nearly vanished completely on the next album album “What’s this for?”.  Killing Joke flirted with commercialism and had a couple of successful singles with the “NightTime” album in the mid-eighties.  This was followed with the synthesizer heavy but poppier “Brighter Than A Thousand Suns”.     Despite threats of lawsuits against Nirvana  for copping a few riffs from one of their mid-eighties tunes,  Killing Joke’s second self-titled is a turbulent attack to the senses featuring Dave Grohl, who proves that he is best placed on a stool behind a drum kit pummeling the complete shit out of it.

5/5