NEW YORK—During the summer of ’81, I wrote a review of London band Killing Joke’s second album What’s This For…! for the Village Voice; in it I described the killing joke ideology as exploitative nonsense, and Killing Joke’s music as an ugly, overwhelming, heavy metal-disco fusion that might be the first real advance in HM since the Stooges. Ex-Jem Records publicist Rhonda Shore told me of their reaction: the band tore the article into little pieces, burned it, and suggested I never chance to meet them on the back streets.
Compounded by stories of Killing Joke beating the shit out of journalists they object to, it was with some trepidation that I agreed to put my hungover head in the lion’s den, even for CREEM. With current Jem publicist Ben Liemer convinced I wouldn’t be the slightest upset if he joined the interview, I met head KJ Jaz Coleman and guitarist Geordie (introducing himself with a shout of “fucking rubbish” from the bedroom of their hotel quarters, after one of Jaz’s more blatant twistings of the truth), for yet another seminar on the sound and vision of man against nature and the power of the will.
To be honest, I purely accidentally (yeah, right) forgot to mention the Voice story. And possibly because of that, there was little friction during our encounter. Jaz is loquacious, speaking with an intense certainty that brooks no disagreement (“if you consider us just a rock band, we can stop right now”, “you either get the killing joke or you don’t”), and with no compassion. He dismisses everything he disagrees with; all “pop” music, homosexuals, the tragedy of armed conflict (“it is necessary for man’s evolution back to nature”), Irish people (especially NME writer Gavin Martin, a “small, obnoxious, patriotic Irish wanker”), most people. In Jaz’s world you either work with the nature of existence or you work against it. And if that sounds familiar, perhaps it’s enough to mention that he studied the Bible for 13 years, and first sang as an altar boy in the Church choir.
Today, Jaz hates the Christian religion with the passion he usually reserves for patriotism; both are “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” However, there is a religious atmosphere to the killing joke theory: “Killing Joke are primeval music, that’s exactly what we’re aspiring to,” Jaz preaches, “because when the human being has his feet on the ground, when there’s lots of drums, when there’s rhythm, when it’s even more than human, that’s when the sound is in sync with nature. The sounds — even the three albums we’ve recorded — seem to be going even more off the beaten track.
“Most bands get more commercial as they go on, but success to us isn’t selling albums, it’s complete control over our environment. Take ‘Wardance’, that’s a great song, an animal song. It’s about the nature of man, the subconscious demand for blood. It’s about coming to terms with that.” And, hopefully, leaving those urges behind?
“Ultimately, yes. It would be a nice idea if that by literally cracking an egg, the energy and force that you and I demand could be appeased, of course. But not yet. Not for another thousand years. I see 500 years of dark ages, barbarism first.”
Not yer average pop band, eh? Well, they are in NY to, er, push the product (Revelations produced by Conny Plank), but since they started in ’79, Killing Joke have had more ups/downs/displays than most any band I can think of. Their interest in Magus Aleister Crowley is a closer connection to Satanism than Iron Maiden’s worst nightmares (on the table are several Crowley tomes as we talk, and a deck ofTarot cards, and Jaz speaks about there being “no such thing as evil; it’s all energy”). KJ actually disintegrated earlier this year after Jaz went to Iceland (“the killing joke in action”), followed by Geordie, and finally regrouping with original drummer Paul. Which left spiritual figurehead Youth “Pig” Martin — a violent, erratic man, known for three-day LSD trips ending naked at a cop shop (“From Sid Vicious to Syd Barrett in three years,” cracks Geordie) out in the cold. KJ despise England, despise America; the reason for their violent hatred of patriotism is that it is man fighting nature, bringing the world to its current state of deterioration. Hence the coming nuclear war isn’t bad, it’s necessary.
Jaz’s description of the band’s music as “nature throwing up” is, well, interesting. I don’t buy the killing joke for an instant; it’s fatalistic, juvenile, negative. But sitting with Jaz and listening, I can see the attraction, the thought process. And for all the negativity, the final solution of man’s evolution is, for Jaz, in the power of the will to get back in step with nature. And that is positive, if only for the individual. Still, my only real interest in the band remains the music, Revelations being more of the same. The sound gets tougher, less interesting. The dance is untwistable here, the idea’s running out of steam. Maybe in a thousand years I’ll get the punchline.