Killing Joke

Reissues SPINEFARM

Honour the fire! Two Joke zeniths get double vinyled, while singles get quadruply collected.

Nothing else makes a noise quite like Killing Joke. Co-founding drummer Paul Ferguson once famously decribed it as “the sound of the earth vomiting”. But it’s more seismic than that. You can ask yourself where it came from all you like, intellectualise over the socio-political backdrop from whence it emerged or individual band members’ formative musical influences (be they classical, dub, Floyd, punk or Chic) until you’re nauseous, but the sound of Killing Joke is way beyond human understanding. It just is.

Listening back to their self-titled debut of 1980 (), the first question your assaulted psyche wants answered is which auteur producer coaxed this extraordinary titanic roar from the four largely untried musicians? Steve Lillywhite? Chris Thomas? Lee Perry? Astonishingly, they did it themselves. On first hearing, you don’t question , it simply rolls over you like breaking surf. It’s a physical, visceral thing. You can’t stroke your chin over the inner workings of , you’re too busy having your inner primitive