In this particularly gushy episode of the world’s greatest industrial and related musics podcast, we talk about Killing Joke and Ulver. Both bands beloved to the senior staff at I Die: You Die, both bands with storied careers and distinct musical phases and both bands we can (and do!) go on about at length! If that sounds like it’s up your alley, then crank it up, Bruce and Alex get real excited on this one. Rate and subscribe on iTunes, download directly or stream from the widget below.
We Have a Technical #46: Noted Fruitcake
Well, I for one certainly enjoyed the “gush-cast” on Killing Joke, a personal favorite of mine of long standing. Jaz Coleman has certainly done a masterful job this past dozen or so years of transforming his personal demons and apocalyptic visions into compelling art. I don’t know that I agree that “Hosannas” represents the high-point of their 21st-century output on an album-by-album basis – the self-titled album still holds up incredibly well for me, especially considering how topical some of the songs are – but reckoning song-by-song, “Invocation” may be the quintessential latter-day KJ piece. Jaz Coleman prophesies the millennium, his voice rising from a gentle croon to a furious roar, as the band plays music that sounds like the bastard son of Richard Wagner and an Egyptian belly dancer formed a heavy metal band. No matter how many times I hear it, I always find myself holding my breath at the end of the second verse, when all the music stops, and then… “BAAAAAAABYYYLOOOONNNNN!!!”
Unfortunately, my awe does not extend to Mr. Coleman’s performance in interviews over the past few years, which I’ve had to start avoiding for my own sanity’s sake. He has the right to his opinions, of course, but I find his increasingly strident declamations on conspiracy theories and knee-jerk anti-Americanism just a bit much.
A couple points of information:
It was Iceland to which Jaz had decamped in the early Eighties, fearing the end of the world was nigh. The band was left to do a couple of TV promo spots with a guy in a beekeeper’s outfit (or possibly just the empty outfit) filling in on mimed vocals. Geordie and Youth then joined him in Iceland, and they did some work with some bands there. When the world failed to end, Youth returned to England feeling somewhat ridiculous, and that was the end of the original lineup.
Along those lines, there has never been a Killing Joke recording or tour without Geordie, to my knowledge. There was a break in the early Nineties, between “Extremities” and “Pandemonium”, when Geordie and the other Jokers, sans Jaz, regrouped as Murder Inc. with Chris Connelly. Allegedly, this was because Mr. Coleman had suffered a nervous breakdown and wandered off again, and the rest of the group decided to go on without him. Fortunately for Mr. Connelly, they didn’t make him wear the beekeeper’s outfit.
While I’m here, I’d like to say thanks for the look into the world of Ulver, about whom I knew virtually nothing up until now. My cat, who had been napping peacefully next to me while I listened, jerked abruptly awake at the first tones of the song you played, and high-tailed it from the room when the beat kicked in. I enjoyed it, though.
Thanks for the clarification. I could have sworn Geordie checked out at some point in the eighties or nineties, but you’re absolutely correct per a brief perusal of wikipedia.