Description
Medieval Death LP and free DVD + Mordicus “Rights ‘n Trials” LP. Official videos, audio, info.
Check the exclusive video showing this LP for sale
Check the exclusive video showing this LP for sale
Medieval Death LP and free DVD + Mordicus “Rights ‘n Trials” LP. Official videos, audio, info.
Killing Joke have influenced many later bands, such as Nirvana, Ministry, Amen, Lamb of God, Nine Inch Nails, Porcupine Tree, Napalm Death, Amebix, Big Black, Opeth, Godflesh, Tool, Prong, Metallica, Primus, Jane Addiction, Soundgarden, Foo Fighters, Faith No More,The Banner, Blacklist, Shihad, Pitchshifter, Das Oath, Rammstein and Korn, all of whom have at some point cited some debt of gratitude to Killing Joke.
What THIS For…! is the second studio album by Killing Joke. It was released in June 1981 on EG Music.
Label: E’G Records
Catalog#: EGMD 5.50
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country:UK
Released: 1981
Genre: Post-Punk
Side one
“”The Fall of Because”” – 5:12
“”Tension”” – 4:33
“”Unspeakable”” – 5:20
“”Butcher”” – 6:11
Side two
“”Follow the Leaders”” – 5:37
“”Madness”” – 7:43
“”Who Told You How?”” – 3:37
“”Exit”” – 3:42
All songs written by Killing Joke.
Jaz Coleman – vocals, synthesizer
Kevin “”Geordie”” Walker – guitar
Martin “”Youth”” Glover – bass guitar
Paul Ferguson – drums, vocals
Phonographic Copyright (p) – E.G. Records Ltd.
Copyright (c) – E.G. Records Ltd.
Copyright (c) – Energy Music
Recorded At – The Town House
Written-By, Producer – Killing Joke
Notes
The second catalogue number appears between brackets on the back sleeve under the first.
©1981 EG Records LTD (sleeve)
Labels:
© Energy Music 1981
℗ 1981 EG Records LTD
Recording studio and engineers are taken from Jaz Coleman’s “Letters From Cythera” book (page 278-279).
Pressing plant and cutting facility are derived from matrix.
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Matrix / Runout (Runout side A, variant 1): EG MD 550 A//1▽E TH TOWNHOUSE PADRES PRIDE
Matrix / Runout (Runout side B, variant 1): EGMD 550 B//1▽E TH TOWNHOUSE NICK & STEVE
Matrix / Runout (Runout side A, variant 2): EG MD 550 A//1▽E TH L1 TOWNHOUSE PADRES PRIDE
Matrix / Runout (Runout side B, variant 2): EGMD 550 B//1▽E TH TOWNHOUSE NICK & STEVE
My favorite Killing Joke album!
Killing Joke is the only punk rock’n’roll band that I have listened to on a regular basis, since the early 1980’s. I have listened to each of their first five albums many dozens of times. Killing Joke continues to be on my regular listening agenda, even 40 years after I saw them perform at a nightclub in Madison, Wisconsin called, Merlyn’s. My favorite Killing Joke compositions include Requiem, Wardance, We Have Joy, Who Told You How, Termite Mound, Adorations, and Sanity.
THE FALL OF BECAUSE. Has a repeated motif that takes the form of a pair of distorted guitar chords, followed by a tribal drum thump having three quick pounds. This 2-chord/3-pound motif is repeated throughout this composition. The composition also includes an interlude that is repeated periodically, when a voice cries out, “fall” and then cries out “because.”
TENSION. Provides a vigorous tribal drum beat going, 1-2-3-4-5-SIX; 1-2-3-4-5-SIX; 1-2-3-4-5-SIX; 1-2-3-4-5-SIX. The accent is on the sixth beat. The vocals go, “Take advantage – let nothing be fantasy. How do you grow as you stunt your growth? Nothing you say makes sense anymore. Then you look around – there must be some explanation. And the tension builds!”
UNSPEAKABLE. Begins with an ominous sound, resembling that of the tornado siren warnings that are emitted during the summertime in states like Wisconsin and Kansas. The reiterated tribal drum bead is one of the best in Killing Joke’s repertoire. Jazz Coleman’s voice seems to have been electronically doubled. At 3 minutes, 10 sec to 3 minutes, 40 sec comes a sound resembling that of a subway train whizzing under New York City. UNSPEAKABLE is one of Killing Joke’s more addictive compositions.
BUTCHER. Slow-paced composition with a throbbing monotonous bass line. BUTCHER is one of the most compelling of all of Killing Joke’s compositions. At 1 minute, 26 seconds comes a short transition consisting of three chords. This three-chord transitional motif occurs at eight points in this composition. The lyrics include: “Mining for oil, they were bleeding for gold, Fruit tasting bitter, the lead in the air, Butcher the womb and expect her to bear . . . Appointment with destiny for those who will run, Out of the virus immunity comes.
FOLLOW THE LEADERS. Includes a programmed synthesizer motif that accompanies the vocals. The vocal style in this composition is more gentle, and not in the grindcore style. The drum kit is more insistent and throbbing than in most Killing Joke compositions.
MADNESS. Slower paced, with a synthesizer motif sounding like what a snake charmer would want to play on a pungi when a viper is about to strike. This viper sound is heard at 4 seconds to 17 seconds. The bass line provides a continuous grunting pig noise. Vocals begin at 45 seconds.
WHO TOLD YOU HOW? This is the best cut on the album. This composition provides a vamp that is similar to some of the compositions on, LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS, by Byrne and Eno. The tribal drum beat, combined with electronically processed vocals, draws you in and ensnares you.
EXIT. “it starts with a dog barking. It’s a great song, but that whole album is amazing” (according to Faith No More bassist Billy Gould, this is one of the 10 greatest Killing Joke’s songs ever). This composition is most representative of the “Killing Joke sound,” in terms of the style used for the drums, guitar, and vocals. This composition is also distinguished by the fact that it ends with Jaz Coleman speaking the sound, “Awwww!”
What THIS For…! showed that Killing Joke could maintain their frenetic, doom-wracked intensity while experimenting with their already strongly established style. Jaz Coleman vocals go through even more treatments and tweaks than before, chorus shout-alongs swathed in deep echoes, hidden behind Geordie Walker punishing riffs and the steroid-driven rhythm section. Big Paul Ferguson in particular lays down some absolutely skull-crushing drum slams and Youth is no less intense at most parts, and often they rather than Coleman or Geordie dictate the song, as the lengthy death-groove of “”Madness”” makes perfectly clear. Elsewhere Geordie shows a calmer (comparatively) side, soloing on songs like “”Butcher”” making common cause with the guitar work of Bernard Sumner in Joy Division days — indeed, the song as a whole could almost be a tribute to that band, and one of the better ones at that. The playing around with supposed genre boundaries doesn’t hurt either — the beatbox/synth loop pulse of “”Follow the Leaders,”” crossed with the more brusque blasts from the core band, suggests its eventual path in later years, while “”Tension”” lets the slithering funk heart of the band burst forth even more strongly. (The drums and opening riffs themselves almost sound like a parody of the Knack “”My Sharona.””) “”Unspeakable”” is arguably the hidden highlight of the album, Coleman heavily flanged, distorted singing sliding down a slowly descending chord pattern that suggests an early glam band gone martial and paranoid, Ferguson all over his set like four people at once. The debts of later bands toward Killing Joke are even clearer than ever, whether it the fact a group named themselves after the opening track, “”The Fall of Because,”” or that late-’80s Ministry so effectively cloned the whole style on songs like “”Burning Inside.””
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5.0 out of 5 stars high point,
one of the best albums ever written , period, a masterful sonic wall of noise, butcher is the ultimate climate change song,no tree hugging here,instead u have a song that spits bile at the psychotic self harm that is modern neo con capitalism. there…… a masterpiece
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The second, a refinement of the first, the Siamese twin bolted and then twisted, Dubbed with strangeness, this explores the DSM manual of madness. Replete with body shaking Moroder bass beats emblazened with boiling rage, the world quivers as the end is greeted with ironic cheers. Throughout the music the tension builds, throwing out the questions and expecting no replies.
The musical equivalent to the Indian throwing the sink through the wall in the Cuckoo nest, the Joke enlarged the hole then bid all to follow the leader through a brief gap. Railing against the madness left behind, they ran into the colder climates.
The guitar rips the neck from the body on each thrash of the strings, the sounds of a guillotine. The drums batter the skins to a proto slimeval beat. The bass dredges the bottom of twilight worlds, whilst the vocals bang their head against a brick wall. Coated in blood and phlegm this was psychic under exploration rather than punk rock charge. Incandescent with unformed rage
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5.0 out of 5 stars
This album broke the mould for me. It showed me what could happen with talent, anger and insight. It summed up the crazy time in the UK when it was released and I played it to death. None of it has dated, just more ominous and menacing.
A stupendous record.
You might recognise this scene for two reasons; Firstly you live in Norwich and have walked down either Duke Street or Oak Street or have sauntered down this chopped off continuation of Colegate beside St Miles Church with it’s lovely flushwork and tracery. Secondly, you are of a certain age and liked punk, post-punk and new wave stuff, which I did and still do. I had a serious love affair with several bands from about 1979 and 1980. Killing Joke were probably one of the big ten of my top 100 bands of 1981 on that moving scale of ‘what I like’ at the time it included The Skids, The Ruts, and Joy Division amongst many others, having cast off Stiff Little Fingers and Blondie and was busily pretending I never liked Adam and the Ants in the first place. They’ve all stayed with me in one way or another and flow in and out of favour still in the Jukebox in my mind along with all the other drifting detritus I’ve picked up over the last 35 years.
I first heard various bits of Killing Joke on John Peel, not the Funkier stuff from the early Turn to Red 12 inch singles, more the grating and brilliant Wardance and Pssyche and the eponymously titled Killing Joke; the original beaten up pressing of which I still have in it’s now well worn cover which features the semi-iconic remix of Don McCullin’s photo of the Troubles in Belfast mashed into stark black and white, the vinyl is grey from use and abuse but it still plays. Inside the sleeve is the vista with the bonfire and the sinister Christ-like figure, a stark zeitgeist mix of the visuals of the political climate and the feeling of some global end game being played out between superpowers. The images were messed about with by Mike Coles who designed a lot of the early sleeves for them. I painted both faces of that album on various leather jackets and walls at the time, and immersed myself in the cruel and stark sound a lot of the time. In my brief soujourn at Norwich Art College I even wrote a piece about sleeve art that included Mike Coles and the first two Killing Joke albums and all the singles, I can’t remember what it said, but I obviously didn’t do enough research possibly because of the Red Lion.
The second album What’s THIS for…! came out in 1981, a brilliantly dark and mad piece of drum heavy scratchy meaty guitared vinyl which I’ve pretty much worn out. I Suppose I may have bought it in Backs Records in Swan Lane which would be authentic synchronicity, but it equally could have been Andy’s or Robyn’s or at a push Top Deck. There wasn’t much option where I lived at the time, either Telefusion or Woolworths who stocked the odd chunk of punk but rarely had anything of huge interest that wasn’t top forty material. Record buying therefore involved riding a train knee deep in fag ash to Norwich or a long wait on the side of a road and a hitch in. Curiously Backs Records also had its offices and store for the distribution part of their record business in St Mary’s works not far from where this photo was taken. I carried on liking Killing Joke’s output for two more albums, then gradually went off them for a fair while as they slowly morphed first into a twangy goth band and then into a weird semi-orchestral thing splitting up joining other seminal noisy bastards and in fact some fairly mainstream dance things, before going back to strangling chords out of overtightened weirdly tuned guitars again for the last 20 years. The first two albums are still two of my favourite pieces of plastic in the world.
What of course I’m getting to which is the weird bit is this odd little collection of archways in front of a development of council flats are the same collection of weirdly arched windows that feature on What’s THIS for…! the photograph was also taken by Mike Coles the designer of the sleeves who has resurrected Malicious Damage. Quite coincidentally we very nearly moved into one of these flats under these archways in 1989 but decided with an incoming child something more spacious might be better so we waited so we didn’t. I’d probably spent enough of my life living inside some weird Killing Joke nightmare and was happier with Sonic Youth, Slab! and My Bloody Valentine as my weapons of choice by then anyway.
Had I realised in 1981 that this was where this scene is, I would have run down there buckle boots chinking and flapping with my stupid sticky up hair slicked back by the wind and licked the building in an overexcited, skinny angst-ridden teenage way.
Medieval Death LP and free DVD + Mordicus “Rights ‘n Trials” LP. Official videos, audio, info.
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