After seven years of wandering their own private wildernesses, Killing Joke reformed in 2003, releasing a self-titled album that seemed a bottled-up, guttural response to a new(er) world order led by a new(er) President Bush. While the intensity of that 2003 effort announced the band was still mad and paranoid as ever, its uneven composition reflected the setting of its creation: three old band mates, living on three separate continents, intermittently recording tracks for a project with a session drummer-to-be-named later (Dave Grohl, it turned out, for various commercial and karmic payback reasons).
But since then, Killing Joke are a band again: completing a world tour and live 25th anniversary concert recording, drafting a full-time drummer, and living together while occupying Prague’s basement Faust Studio as their personal rehearsal and recording pen.
The result of this new cohesion is 2006’s Hosannas From the Basements of Hell, and the contrasting method of its creation versus its predecessor’s is palpable. For starters, the band self-produced, though with mixed results. The sound is refreshingly raw thanks to older recording equipment the band also used for its first album. However, the songs are epically longer, sometimes gratuitously so: With no producer to rein them in, only one track finishes in under five minutes. That song is the opener, “This Tribal Antidote,” which begins with lead singer Jaz Coleman’s incantation: “Lift up your spirits!” The song is indeed uplifting and serves as the album’s invocation: Play these trance-like songs, put aside the horrors of the world for a moment, and celebrate alternative lifestyles.
After the metallic sound of 2003’s Killing Joke, older fans will recognize the return of guitarist Geordie Walker’s cascading chords. His anti-solo ethic and hollow-bodied bell tones dominate this album, bounding in and out of valleys of cycling chord patterns that frame every song. Walker’s trademark sound is best exemplified in the chorus of the title track and throughout the rousing “Majestic”—itself an example of everything Killing Joke does well.
The lone exception to Walker’s lead is “Invocation,” where Coleman borrows from his day job conducting symphonies to lay a horrific orchestral landscape for the coming “lawless war without end.” Otherwise, Coleman sticks to singing—though his growling voice now limits him—and adding his atmospheric synthesizer to establish a subtle layer of tension.
But underneath their dark yet revelrous tribal ethos, Killing Joke is a groove band, and Walker teams with bassist Paul Raven to create relentless, driving grooves on “Implosion,” “Walking With Gods,” and “Lightbringer.” Together, the three songs could be their own compilation, Music to Run for Your Life To.
Over these grooves, despite happy intentions, lie modern fears and rage. “Accelerated eco-meltdown, no one gives a damn/Keep everyone in debt while the big banks own the land,” Coleman fumes on “Majestic.” Still, his appreciation for life surfaces in “Implosion”: “The highs and lows of every day, laughter and screams won’t go away/But the total experience of it all blows me away.” These sounds blow me away too.
Link: "http://firehorsecancer.multiply.com/music/item/1767" -->>
No comments:
Post a Comment