Pick Your Rock and Metal

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

NEWS: Jaz brings Killing Joke to Belfast....on Halloween night

FIRST we had Saxon, Fastway and Girlschool were announced for October 30th. Then DistortionFest, with Warrior Soul and Lord Volture was announced for October 29th.

And, now you'll have to make sure you have enough beer tokens as Killing Joke are playing Belfast on Halloween night.

The iconic goth/industrial/electronic metal act led by the insanely talented Jaz Coleman are confirmed by to play Limelight1 on October 31st.

The band are currently riding on a high after the release of their latest album 'Pylon' last October.

Tickets, priced £18.50 (plus Booking Fee), go on sale on Friday, July 1st.



Here's the official blurb:

Rock’s most iconic, influential and contrary outfits, Killing Joke is pleased to announce a headline Belfast date at The Limelight 1 on Monday 31st October 2016. The bands live show has never been better, gathering a host of glowing reviews throughout the media, their most recent album 'Pylon' was released in October 2015.
Tickets on sale Friday July 01st at 10am from www.limelightbelfast.comwww.ticketmaster.ie Katy’s Bar & Ticketmaster outlets nationwide. Northern Ireland customers 0844 277 44 55 & Republic of Ireland customers 0818 719 300 


Their story (a genuinely extraordinary tale) dates back to 1978 and the post-punk scene of West London where classically-trained musician / vocalist  Jeremy ‘Jaz’ Coleman, drummer ‘Big’ Paul Ferguson, guitarist Kevin ‘Geordie’ Walker and bassist Martin ‘Youth’ Glover set about establishing a new, idiosyncratic manifesto for reinventing the rock ‘n’ roll wheel…
Right from the start, Killing Joke were unwilling to conform to the artistic restrictions of a particular scene; rather, they took a broader view, fusing together a host of musical elements to create something both different and timely. Pitched somewhere between the snub-nosed aggression and bleak primitivism of UK punk and the epic grandeur and cool detachment of German electronic rock bands like Tangerine Dream and Can, the band’s sound emerged fully-formed and ready to go – a vibrant, punishing antidote to virtually everything else happening in music at that time. 
Both their self-titled debut album and its 1981 follow-up, ‘What’s THIS For..!’, cemented their reputation as a maverick and creative force, and due to a penchant for controversial imagery plus a refusal to pull punches in terms of the truth (as they saw it), the quartet rapidly became the most notorious band in the UK. For Coleman and his fellow musicians, conventional notions of politics or propaganda were not to be accepted blindly; they urged people to think for themselves, to question old orthodoxies and their surroundings in general, conjuring up images of an impending apocalypse with music that was never meant to be pretty yet often attained a ragged and glorious beauty, a tattered flag in the wind.
As a result, an intense and passionate relationship started to grow with an ultra-loyal international fan base, a relationship that remains intact to this day, with the group’s philosophical stance and soundtrack to the modern age – a deep, dogmatic howl documenting our calamitous descent into chaos – seeming more and more plugged-in as the years progress…
And those years have witnessed a run of truly remarkable recordings underpinned by some of the most unpredictable behaviour in the ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Book Of Strange Practices’, with Coleman – a man most at ease in remote places devoid of technology – occasionally going AWOL for extended periods, and choosing to record in locations dramatically outside of the norm, i.e. the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
The results of that momentous session appeared on the ‘Pandemonium’ album (1994), one of the most celebrated and successful of the band’s career; and whilst it’s difficult to spotlight individual releases, there’s no question that ‘Pandemonium’ stands shoulder to shoulder with 1985’s ‘Night Time’ (featuring the Top 20 single, ‘Love Like Blood’), 2003’s second self-titled album (produced by Youth with Gang Of Four guitarist Andy Gill and featuring Dave Grohl on drums) and 2010’s ‘Absolute Dissent’ (which saw the original line-up reuniting for the first time in almost 30 years) as key moments in the band’s (ongoing) body of work.
In addition to building up their formidable catalogue, the KJ members have chosen to develop their talents in a variety of different ways; triple Grammy winner Coleman, for instance, has carved out an international reputation working with some of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras, becoming a ‘Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres’ in 2010 for his achievements with the arts; Youth, meanwhile, has established himself as one of the UK’s most celebrated producers, supervising albums from the Verve & Primal Scream amongst others, as well as gaining major success as one half of highly-regarded duo, The Orb. 
 Now based in the US, Ferguson – who once famously described the band as “the sound of the earth vomiting” – devotes his time to restoring ancient artefacts when not positioned behind his kit, leaving Geordie to define the black beating heart of the KJ sound with an acclaimed and eclectic guitar style delivered at arresting volume through a resonating hollow-bodied Gibson ES 295.
 It’s as a unit, however, that the four musicians are best able to truly channel the elements, creating three decades-plus worth of recordings that have been covered by some of rock’s foremost players, including Metallica (‘The Wait’), Foo Fighters (‘Requiem’), Helmet (‘Primitive’) and Fear Factory(‘Millennium’). Artists of the stature of Jimmy Page and Billy Corgan have long shown their support and respect, whilst the band’s considerable musical legacy can be heard through acts such asNirvana, Ministry and Nine Inch Nails – celebrated names whose rise to fame never saw them cutting ties with the underground / alternative scene.
 Now, with the original line-up continuing to hold firm, Killing Joke are on a mission to take their music of resistance to a whole new level, with latest studio album ‘Pylon’ – the 16th of their career and their third for Spinefarm Records, following on from ‘Absolute Dissent’ (2010) and ‘MMXII’ (2012) – having been released worldwide on October 23rd 2015, supported by a touring plan that saw the band headlining shows around the world, starting with a UK run in October / November of last year…


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