Here I was again, in London this time, 5 years after the first time I saw Killing Joke perform live in Athens of Greece. I have joined the rest of the gatherers (as Killing Joke refer to their ‘fans’), in order to participate to one more carefully orchestrated live ceremony of Killing Joke.Roundhouse was beginning to fill with people as I was (as always) worried whether the support bands have been selected based on the relevance of their music to that of the headliners. I was also secretly worried about the music that we would listen in between the support bands’ sets. Asylums_9

The Asylums, being a garage rock band wAsylums_10ith a lot of energy on stage and a very theatrical guitarist, made noise and warmed us up with songs that harked back at Smashing Pumpkins and Oasis. This is a young, new band with D.I.Y ethics who have released their debut EP entitled
‘WET DREAM FANZINE’ through their own label Cool Things Records on February 2015. This EP was available after this gig . I liked this band as  I found that the interaction with the audience as well as between the singer and the guitarisAsylums_7t was adding to the excitement their music was creating to all of us. Even though the music of The Asylums was quite different in style to that of Killing Joke, their energy bared some similarities. I couldn’t stop thinking that if the next support band would be equally dynamic, then that would prove that the support bands for Killing Joke were chosen wisely.
This wishful thinking was soon proven to be ill founded as reggae music began to be heard once The Asylums finished their set. The band has released one more single in November 2015 

Asylums_13
Taking into account that we had gathered there to see Killing Joke, a band associated with mysticism and paganism above all as well as with the dark side of the music and life, the choice of reggae music seemed quite inappropriate not to mention mood killing. Even by making some Jah_2‘dangerous’ assumptions one can never argue that reggae music and Killing Joke have things in common. A few reggae songs later, we observed a man dressed in a cotton cream coloured suit, making an entrance by doing some sort of silent stand up comedy with the help of another member of the band. The ‘assistant’ then removed his jacket and Jah Wobble a.k.a John Joseph Wardle, sat on a chair and started playing the guitar almost as if he was an animated doll. Jah Wobble the former bassist of Public Image Limited and a close friend of Johnny Rotten was featured on The Dany Baker Show at BBC Radio 5 earlier this year where  he claimed that he , …”deliberately” done everything that
performers were not meant to do when appearing on the television show, including looking up at the monitors
. According to Jah Wobble’s autobiography ‘ “Memoirs of a Geezer:Music, Mayhem,Life” his stage Jah_3name derived from t
he drunken, mumbled version of it by Sid Vicious who also lent to him his first bass guitar. Wobble kept this stage name ever since, because people would never forget it.
On May 2015, Jah Wobble released through Cherry Red Records, ‘Redux‘ a box set that spans his whole career as a musician from the days of PiL until now.

Soon pre-recorded female vocals were heard and the rest of the band called Jah Wobble’s Invaders of The Heart, joined as the first song of the setlist was being performed. The music of the band has a reggae twist on what concerns the rhythms but as their show progressed, more elements were revealed. Jah was definitely the maestro behind all this and was addressing/introducing his fellow musJah_5icians as a varieté artist with jokes. In this way he established a connection between each of them and the audience.  As the show progressed we picked up influences from jazz music in the rhythms and from dark cabaret shows in the performance and the vocals. Jah Wobble is a performer with a few tricks up his sleeve when it comes to vocal styles and overall stage appearance. As he introduced “Fodderstompf” he turned to the audience and said “Oh don’t pretend you are not dysfunctional…” and during the sarcastic/cynical chorus of the song he encouraged all of us to sing along “…we only wanted to be loved we only wanted to be loved…” . For me personally this was a weird moment and I felt kind of awkward and I couldn’t understand his performance. It’s a performing style that is not my personal favourite as I am not a person who finds stand up comedians to be particularly amusing. There were people in the audience who enjoyed this show but I couldn’t help thinking that this band was in complete contrast with what Killing Joke stand for, stylistically, aesthetically, musically and in terms of idiosyncrasy. 

We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realized they were inside us… (The Joker) R-7542205-1443633817-9466.jpeg

All this mattered less once the crew lit up the three big white candles which were placed next to a small pair of antlers on a speaker at the back of the stage. The atmosphere was coloured immediately with darker colours and moods as was fit in order to prepare all of us, gatherers, for another Killing Joke live ceremony! ‘Ghost Rider’ by Suicide quite suitably prepared our hearts and minds for what would follow. Roundhouse was under a spell from a potent ethereal creature when chills started enveloping all of us as “The Masked Ball” by Jocelyn Pook started playing really loud as all the lights went off! As I closed my eyes in order to be completely submerged in the atmosphere of this song, scenes from ‘The Death And Resurrection Show’ started passing through my mind. You just can’t not feel awe when listening to this and expecting Jaz Coleman to appear in front of you!

…we don’t like the term ‘fan’ as it is derogatory we are all in the process of self education thus Killing Joke aficionados are referred to as Gatherers… (extract from an interview with Jaz Coleman for the webzine postwave in 2010)

KJ_13The song was stopped and one by one, Youth, Geordie, Paul and Reza found their place on stage before Jaz Coleman made a respectful and grave entrance. The ceremony had started and we were all meant to emerge quite different after this!

This was neither the first time I was seeing Killing Joke live nor have I recently started to follow their career, quite the opposite actually. Jaz Coleman is a personality, which fascinates me as he has quite consciously subjected his whole being, physically and psychologically to so many different and demanding (sometimes, almost exhausting) situations in order to be inspired and to be guided on what concerns the directions his art (and himself) can take. KJ_8To name a few, he has funded two ecological villages in the Pacific and Chile, he is an ordained priest with his own church in New Zealand, he has composed classical music(including the opera ‘The Marriage at Cana’ for the Royal Opera House in 2001) and music for soundtracks and he has studied music in Leipzig and Cairo. The movie ‘The Death And Resurrection Show’ that I watched earlier this year atKJ_12 BFI Southbank was revelatory and provided glimpses to the darkness and richness of this man behind Killing Joke. Based on this movie Jaz Coleman eats “…porridge and raw fish before the show whenever I am on tour…” as a way to prepare himself physically for each show! So it didn’t matter that I have seen this band perform before. After the insight gained through this movie, I felt the need to attend a live performance again and experience it under the prism of that movie. This is a musician with so much awareness and experience about so many things (maybe too many) that a conversation with him could last for hours and lead to unknown territories…

Smile because it confuses people
Smile because it’s easier than explaining what is killing you inside…
(The Joker)

Now I don’t know if I have ever admitted this but, from all the characters in Batman, I find the Joker to be the most interesting and marvelously dangerous one of all and that’s because he is free…Free from limitations placed on him by the environment, free spiritually to wander in the space between extremes and provocative firstly towards himself and then KJ_19towards others. Jaz Coleman is an anti hero, a personification of The Joker in another form and he appears in front of us in order to share feelings
and thoughts and to shake us from our places of spiritual comfort. Emotionally, psychologically, thought provoking Jaz Coleman masters dark sarcasm and displays the ability to move freely in and out of his stage character while he is performing. The make up
and the facial gestures revealed that the person that was moving in this doric (as a moving Doric statue) almost monolithic manner, actually displayed qualities that I have only seen again in performances of ancient greek tragedies! Jaz Coleman, the theatrical figure with the white paint, as a white mask, that covered his face, was moving up and down the stage when he was not staring at us with a very dramatic gaze! Youth and Geordie were occasionally providing backing vocals and shifted momentarily our attention from the black dressed vampire-like figure of Jaz Coleman.

The setlist

“Motives changing
Day to day
The fire increases
                                                             Mask decay…”
(lyrics from the song: ‘The Wait’)

This time the band had included carefully selected songs from four older albums spanning the period 1980-2003 which were stylistically close to the songs from their newest albums. The set list started with The Wait’ from the first album of the band ‘The Original Killing Joke’ released in 1980 and continued with ‘Autonomous Zone’ (from ‘Pylon’) and the older Fall of Because from the 1981 album entitled ‘What’s This For…!’.This character that was singing Autonomous Zone (from the latest album ‘Pylon’), was a blend between Count Dracula and The Joker as he displayed simultaneously the perceptiveness of a hermit (Count Dracula) and the cunning manner of a sarcastic and provocative person (The Joker).

…Cacophony, lovely ear-splitting noise
With wild abandon, give freedom a voice
Living outside of the grid is the goal
                        Misery lies at the heart of control “
 
(lyrics from ‘Autonomous Zone’)

I Am the Virus followed Eighties and Beautiful Dead and was introduced by Jaz Coleman with the following phrase “I want to say this again in case you didn’t hear me the first time. 9/11 was an inside job!”

“Death, misery and tears
Calculated waves of fear
Drawn up by think tanks
There’s a darkness in the West
Oil swilling
Guzzling corporate
Central banking
Mind-fucking Omnipotence…”
(lyrics from the song: ‘I Am The Virus’)

‘Exorcism’ (from the album ‘Pandemonium’ released in 1994 and partly recorded in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid in Cairo) that followed was also introduced in a way that made everyone fall silent and remain speechless KJ_16(apart from a few exceptions) in the venue as Jaz Coleman said that “…we have lost our humanity, we let babies get washed up in the Mediterranean sea and we have lost our compassion, we lost our sensitivity and basically we are guilty for that…we went to Libya, to Iraq, to Afghanistan…when I saw the news the other day I was speechless and I didn’t know what to do and how to react…so maybe what we need is an exorcism of sorts…”
It was an emotional moment for me as well, coming from Greece where this dramatic situation is developing lately. When there was no reaction from the audience which I suspect Killing Joke expected, it felt weird as if still people don’t know how to react to these matters. Change KJ_20provided the next blast from the past and the first album of the band just before Money Is Not Our God, Requiem (from the first album ‘The Original Killing Joke’) and Dawn of The Hive (from Pylon) which preceded the powerful Panopticon (from Pylon) followed by the older Wardance (from the first album ‘The Original Killing Joke’) and Into The Unknown(from Pylon). The official set list closed with Asteroid (from the album ‘Killing Joke’ released in 2003) and Psyche (from the first album ‘The Original Killing Joke’).

I chose to see the encore from the gallery as I enjoy watching the crowd from a height and I also like to take a distance and see the band on stage from another perspective. Turn to Red (from the first album ‘The Original Killing Joke’) kickstarted the last set of songs and just before Madness (from the album ‘What’s This For…!’) Jaz Coleman addressed the audience sarcastically once again saying this:

“I think it’s a really good idea, it makes perfect sense to spend 3 billion pounds updating nuclear weapons, ‘weapons of mass destruction’ as they are called…”

KJ_4
Love like Blood
made me jump and dance with passion once again after ‘Eighties’ at the beginning of the show and this time the introduction was more personal as Jaz Coleman said “…I can’t tell you how much I miss my father…” .

“She says “Look behind the wave of changes”
Feel the future taking shape I can see tomorrow,
I can see the world to come…
I ask her of her next of kin and loved ones in her care
She gestures all around her then she whispers…”
(lyrics from the song: ‘Pandemonium’)

Lately, the band seems to like closing their shows with Pandemonium. This was the song with which the show finished in 2010 when I last saw the band perform live in Athens, Greece. The lyrics of Pandemonium’, being prophetic about a dark future that will uproot everything that we know of, are aligned with our darkest thoughts about a future where the only thing that people will care about will only be their immediate environment. This kind of almost selfish personality that only cares about its immediate environment is exactly the one to probably ‘blame’ about the social inertia that is manifested across the developed world lately and it is my impression that Killing Joke are trying to raise awareness once again through this song.

‘Pylon’ an album which has structural properties for our thoughts, just as a pylon has for a building

KJ_2This gig presented a unique opportunity to listen to songs from the recently released album entitled ‘Pylon’ by Killing Joke. To be honest with you I expected to see the structure depicted on the cover of this album live on stage. Of course if you had the chance to see any of the video clips that complemented the songs and/or read the lyrics, you would have noticed that this is an album with a very strong political identity perhaps because important and grave political transformations have taken place worldwide since the release of the previous album ‘MMXII’ in 2012.This is not to say that Killing Joke didn’t already present themselves as musicians with an awareness about social and political matters. Quite the opposite. It’s just that I have found that there is no other Killing Joke album where every song title alludes so strongly to an idea with strong socio-political aspects. Each song in Pylon refers to a very important idea: autonomy (‘Autonomous Zone’), surveillance (‘Panopticon’), oppression (‘New Jerusalem’), limitation of personal liberties (‘War On Freedom’, ‘Dawn of the Hive’), territorial and political independence (‘New Jerusalem’), forced identity transformations as a result of neoliberalist ideologies and politics (‘New Cold War’). Pylon is an album that comes naturally after ‘Absolute Dissent’ and ‘MMXII’. Its music has less melodies, as the focus now is on motivating rhythms just as the type of rhythm a protest should have in order to successfully claim things back! This is an album that is meant to make us think more profoundly about some things. The atmosphere of the music has the type of heaviness that I personally find attractive while the sound is very clear so the production of this album has created a masterpiece once again. These elements make the messages of the lyrics all the more attractive and convince us that the subjects of these songs should inform our narrative about the global political developments.top-photo“Essentially I believe that there is a fiery spiritual force around us that turns hostile when money is brought into the equation. It killed Heath Ledger. Dangerous territory-I am referring to the eleventh pathway to Divine madness…” (extract from an interview with Jaz Coleman for the webzine postwave in 2010)

Jaz Coleman left the stage having completed his duty as a bearer of important news for us, a traveller who has made a momentary stop in order to warn us about the gravity of the things that are meant to happen and to which we are (and can be a bigger) part of. As a cynical and a hermetic figure he will continue to do so and until the next live ceremony of Killing Joke we can focus more on deciphering the messages hidden within the words of the lyrics in the 15 songs of ‘Pylon’.

You can see more photos from this gig here:https://blaue-rosen.com/killing-joke-the-asylums-jah-wobble-and-the-invaders-of-the-heart-live-at-roundhouse/

Blaue Rosen box  

 

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