Under the Roman Clamour (2016)

Post-Frozen Niagara Falls industrial music in a year of a relatively quiet Dominick Fernow (only two releases!!!). While that one was sprawling and ever-changing, Death Kneel focusses on one key idea which is (1980s) dystopian soundscapes, and microphones put through distortion pedals such that breathing becomes a low-key version of screaming. Under the Roman Clamour benefits from this limitation and by the second half the artist has expanded the familiar into new terrain. Fernow has said that Prurient is all concept, no entertainment (which fans know has not been the truth since 2006's Pleasure Ground), and one of the joys of Under the Roman Clamour is that Max Klebanoff doesn't pretend that there is a conflict there- even his harshest textures are all processed into something soothing

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Spiral (2016)

Resists (masculine?) noise tropes of screaming out sweet catharsis, Puce Mary builds atmospheres which are always on the brink of collapsing but never really do. The human voice is relatively soft and spoken, concerned with the way it appears to the listener while it reflects on the burden of the female body, but it's subsumed into the machine which feeds it back out in processed agony. There is no release, only tension and unease. Live she stands in front of the machine as it breaks free from control and overwhelms her- her role is to bring it back. Over the course of an hour she comes to understand it and then redirects its anger in a direction where she can become one with it, leaving the audience cowering and fearful. The Spiral tells a similar story but in song fragments and mini-atmospheres which bleed into each other. Its secret lies in the fact that it approaches the chaos/harmony machine/human dichotomies from the side of understanding and reconciliation rather than transcendence or rejection- its appeal is the terror and beauty that comes through restraint rather than domination.

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Eden (2016)

It may be the outcome of a potentially one-off Danish noise 'supergroup' (Erik Enocksson, Frederikke Hoffmeier (Puce Mary), Vit Fana, Loke Rahbek, Varg), but A Body Turns to Eden is no less pressing a release than any from its players' prolific output. Personalities become at once identifiable and for the sake of the songs, seamless- Frederikke Hoffmeier sails above a sea of static clouds and rains wisened angst, while abstracted military percussion tracks the ground beneath it. It might be the most delicate thing that any of the group have released, though there is something fundamentally 'off' about this, and it brings pastoral sounds to the listener freakishly devoid of pastoral texture

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Pharm

There's a dry scream and then a 4-song conversation between the dirge-like and the frightened and hysterical. The former makes for a heavy and intoxicating listening experience, the latter's outbursts make you stop what you're doing with sweaty palms and look over there somewhere, sort of really stressed out. Crawling on Bruised Knees is like holy fuck. No idea why some noise releases make it out of the darkndoomy/s&m pit o despair and into the attention of 'hipsters' (malleable as always, here meaning I don't actually know, everyone?) and some don't, though it might have something to do with the lack of s&m, nazi shite, and c.p. found here, leaving just darkndoom and tracks like Crawling on Bruised Knees. THAT, the general public (hipsters) can handle, I think (evidently).

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Killing Joke - Duende: The Spanish Sessions (2008)

I met Jaz Coleman when I was 13 and he signed my CD Jaz and then my t-shirt be a man not a hairy arsed boy and then gave me life advice and he was the coolest dude. Hope they find him soon :(

Duende- Spanish Sessions is a reformed Killing Joke performing some of their best songs. I'd give at an A 'cause Jaz's voice is haggard and the band are incredible and raw on it. I'll copy+paste some Prindle tho:

Paul Raven passed away in 2007. He asked not for it, lest none of us betwixt thither and thou. But lo, with tragedy comes retribution, and thus the original Killing Joke line-up reunited for the first time since Revelations to tour the world in a gigantic space van with "The Who" written on the side. The result was this album: the reunited band's practice session! Kicking bleeding bloody arse on 6 Killing Joke (Original), 3 Pandemonium, 2 Night Time, 1 what's THIS for...! and 2 non-LP tracks, Killing Joke prove that they remain the greatest band of mentally ill paranoiacs in the worldiverse!
Geordie plays his distorted high-pitched guitar, Jaz sings through his scraggly hoarse throat, Paul hits the drums hard and on time, and Youth plays the bass like he never recorded two horrible techno albums with Paul McCartney. The mix is terrific, the set list is mostly on-the-knob (except maybe the overlong "Tomorrow's World" and dull-versed "Millennium") and the performances are completely top-of-house (except "Pandemonium," which finds a clearly bored-as-shit Geordie playing dick-around metal licks instead of the jubilant original riff).

The thing is: the performances are so strong and faultless (complete with the appropriate synth tones for each track -- including latter-day House Rave Dance Spectacular "White Out"!) that there's really no reason for anybody but Killing Joke completists to hear them! Unless you're just blown to bits by the thought of Paul Ferguson drumming on some Pandemonium songs for the first time ever, this is just another great recording of this great band performing great songs that they've played many, many times before. And yes, what's here is great, but it's also awfully disappointing that they chose to touch on a mere FOUR of KJ's twelve studio albums. For example, what in Hell happened to Revelations? It's one of only THREE studio albums to feature this line-up, and they pretend it doesn't exist!? Well it DOES! I've been there, on that album.

Of particular note are these points I am about to make:

- With Youth back in the bass fold, "Pssyche" finally gets its disco bass line back!
- Whoever sings "Pssyche" is unable to sing it with anything near the vitriol of the original. Thankfully, the band kicks the absolute fucking energetic holy hell awesomeness out of it.
- You can hear the three descending keyboard chords in the chorus of "Are You Receiving?"! It's amazing how many renditions of that song completely bury what is easily the most melodic part of the song.
- Geordie uses a cleaner guitar tone in "$036," somehow rendering the song even creepier!
- Jaz is incapable of shutting his lousy pie hole (or "Mouth") during the supposed instrumental "Bloodsport," instead taking the opportunity to share such critical insights as "I defend the right of every citizen to bear arms. Not to protect yourself, but just for pleasure!"
- Near the end of "Pandemonium," silly ol' Geordie sneaks in a couple bars of the "Democracy" riff! Oh you Geordie! You're always Geordiein' us around like that!
- There's some creepy descending noise going on in "Eighties"! What is it? A second guitar? A synth? Jaz shaking a fly swatter at the government-controlled mosquitos that are implanting violent thoughts in his mind?
- How in Dicksville USR is Jaz able to hit the high notes in final track "Love Like Blood" after he's just spent the previous hour raspily shouting through the shredded skin-flaps of a mutilated throat?

Actually, okay -- if you're as big a Killing Joke fan as I am, you NEED THIS. I've given you all the reasons. GO BUY IT! And let's pray that this line-up manages to put together a new studio album before Jaz runs off to Iberia to avoid The Big Conspiracy. 9/10

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Killing Joke - The Peel Sessions 1979-1981 (2008)

John Peel - 17/10/79:

1. Pssyche 4:58

2. Wardance 3:46

3. Nuclear Boy 3:07

4. Malicious Boogie 2:04

John Peel - 5/3/80:

5. Change 4:24

6. Tomorrow's World 4:56

7. Complication 3:25

John Peel - 27/4/81:

8. The Fall of Because 4:18

9. Tension 3:35

10. Butcher 4:38

John Peel - 16/12/81:

11. The Hum 4:16

12. Empire Song 4:46

13. We Have Joy 2:53

14. Chop Chop 4:46

Bonus Richard Skinner Session - 29/5/81:

15. Tension 3:25

16. Unspeakable 2:53

17. Exit 4:39

I ignorantly only really appreciate the post-punk of Public Image and Killing Joke, as girlie dudes claim in their perhaps too close-minded doctrine of anti-industrial-post-punk, industrials believe their own Freudian and Nietzschean hangups to be that of the collective consciousness the industrial seeks to highlight and perhaps embrace or subvert, the girlie dude a) believes in the virtues of romantic love and not domination, and b) has a job and/or life as they then move onto post-punk with the much less enlightened post-punk is the music of intellectuals and record collectors. Girlie dudes will listen to punk rock and Devo and Black Flag but will not debate the sonic merits of your Swans record or the historical importance of your This Heat download. Girlie dudes have work in the morning.

I wish I could explain the magic of Killing Joke and why I like them and not everything else like them ('cept PiL), whether it's that thing about hangups (Jaz was happily married last time I checked and has been declared a spiritual leader rather than a Nietzschean or a Freudian or a nihilist), the way they obviously like disco and new wave, the way you can link them to Big Black if you feel like it, the way Jaz went on to use his voice as an instrument on later releases, or the way that in spite of all that they also sounded like a metal band (with disco, with new wave, with chainsaw guitars), that's all me, so I'll just quote Mark Prindle below to sell the record rather than the band:

If you already own the first three albums, I suppose you could live without this. But why should you? Don't you want your own versions of "Nuclear Boy," "Malicious Boogie" and paranoid classic "Psycche"? Wouldn't you like to hear a studio version of "Wardance" without that monster-robot effect on the vocals? Or "The Fall Of Because" with an awesome delay/echo on the chorus vocal? Or an early version of "Complications" before Geordie added the second guitar chord and Jaz stopped singing each chorus's second "Complication" in an off-key northward direction? You want all these things and more. And some day you'll have them, thanks to your AIDS Gun.
The disc features four Peel Sessions and one Richard Skinner (!?!!??!?!!) session, encompassing 4 Killing Joke, 5 what's THIS for...!, 4 Revelations and 3 non-LP tracks. Here are the reasons that it gets my coveted 10 out of 10 grade:

1. By compiling such tremendous compositions as "Wardance," "Unspeakable" and "The Hum" onto a single disc, the album serves as a perfect entry point for anybody interested in hearing the band.

2. Because these are all alternate studio versions, the new fan can then still enjoy purchasing the first three albums - not just for the tracks not represented here, but for the sometimes radically different versions of the tracks that are here!

3. Being Peel Sessions, the production and mixing are uniformly excellent. Fuzzy keyboards, trebly guitars, tribal drums, dubby bass, shouty Jaz - it's all right in your ear!

4. "Malicious Boogie" and "Change" aren't the best songs in the world, and there's probably no reason to have included two versions of "Tension," but skip those and you've still got FOURTEEN astonishing Killing Joke creations of the first degree. Plus, the second "Tension" is a Skinner session and he totally mics the guitar and drums differently!

5. Like The Fall, Killing Joke has never released an album without a single 'duff track.' This one doesn't qualify either, but (a) it's long as hell, and (b) it features stellar tracks from not one but three studio albums, allowing new listeners to hear how dramatically the first line-up's sound progressed during its brief existence.

But enough about Killing Joke's Peel Sessions. Let's make up some jokes!

Why did the chicken cross the road?
I was eating at KFC and it tasted so shitty, I threw it out the window!

How many Polacks does it take to screw in a light bulb?
If it's a gigantic light bulb with a bed inside, and if by "screw," you mean "have sex," then two!

What's black and white and red all over?
A newspaper! (on which I spilled some ketchup!)

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Banana!
Banana who?
Baaaa, Nana! I'm a sheep and you're my grandmother!

Okay, I'm off to see My Bloody Valentine 3D. DON'T RUIN THE ENDING FOR ME!!!!

A+

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