Timely bump. I’ve been listening over the last couple of days to the first few Killing Joke albums for the first. Could possibly do with a tiny bit more melody, but otherwise very much my cup of tea. What’s This For, in particular, is great even on a first listen.
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If you’re after a bit more melody from KJ then the next trio of albums (Fire Dances, Night Time, Brighter Than A Thousand Suns) might be more up your street.
‘Fire Dances’ is the closest KJ got to making a party album (if you can imagine such a thing from hearing the first 3 albums :D) It’s good, bit Adam & The Ants, but pretty formulaic. ‘Night Time’ & ‘Brighter Than…’ are more satisfying imho. They still have that energy and propulsion you want from KJ but it’s a more epic, anthemic, melancholic sound. They defo lean a bit more into their goth side on these albums.
Those first 6 albums are a bloody amazing run tbf.
Also there’s also some essential EP’s and non album singles (which contain great B-sides) from around those first 6 albums.
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Brighter Than… was the first KJ album I ever heard, way back in 1989. It was love at first listen! I still think 1990’s Dirt, Extremities… is their best album though.
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Thats pretty much exactly what I thought when listening to it today. I like Fire Dances more than Revelations but What’s This For is still the pick of the first four, to my ears (again: on a first listen).
I’ll obviously be giving Night Time a go, too, considering I’ve always rated Love Like Blood (and Eighties, too, though I only very very recently found out that it was KJ).
It took me years to get ‘Brighter…’. as it doesnt have the aggression and violence of the earlier albums which, as a young man, was what i really wanted from KJ. I’ve come to appreciate it for what it is as i’ve got older, think its a really great album now.
When it works ‘Extremities…’ is bloody jaw dropping. ‘Money Is Not Our God’, ‘Age Of Greed’, ‘Intravenous’, and the title track are breathtakingly savage… Some of the proggier tracks outstay their welcome a bit for me but, when it hits, there’s nothing quite like this album in their catalogue. Mixes the strangeness of the early stuff with the monstrous heaviness that was to come in early 21st century KJ.
Also, has a band ever lost the plot so comprehensively as KJ did on ‘Outside The Gate’ and returned to form as quickly and as impressively as they did on ‘Extremities’? can’t be many!
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Heard this just once, bloody awful album, crazy turnaround as you say!
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‘What’s This For?’ has always been not just my no.1 KJ album but one of my all time favourite albums. Think every member is at the top of their game but definitely feel its Youths finest outing in a KJ shirt. How he finds the space in that wall of noise Big Paul and Geordie conjure up on tracks like ‘Tension’, ‘unspeakable’, and ‘Butcher’ to fit in those funky, insidious bass lines is a wonder to me.
as much as i love these album versions, the peel sessions of the tracks from ‘WTF?’ are even better imho.
btw, the best track from the ‘Fire Dances’ era imo isn’t on the album. It’s a b-side from the (bit rubbish tbh) non album single ‘Me & You’. Again, the peel version is better…
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fugg I’m randomly listening to The Ex and came here to post about it
so underrated. The upbeat terror reminds me of Oingo Boingo
Oingo Boingo is a band that, until a moment ago, I only associated with Weird Science and Dead Man’s Party. I’ve just now read their Wikipedia page and am astounded to learn that Danny Elfman, of movie soundtrack fame, was their frontman!
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They just put out a new record - not on streaming because principles, which fair fucks. Katherina Bornefeld is a massively underrated drummer.
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