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Killing Joke - Pylon
Released by: Spinefarm Records
Released on: October 23rd, 2015.
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It's amazing that Killing Joke have been around since 1978. Formed in London by Jaz Coleman, drummer Paul Ferguson, bass player Martin 'Youth' Glover and guitar player Kevin 'Geordie' Walker they've put out a steady stream of dark, confrontational post-punk/industrial themed albums. There were lineup changes over the years but in 2009 those founding members got back together (along with Reza Uhdin on keyboards) and put out 2010's Absolute Dissent and have been going pretty strong ever since. Pylon, the band's sixteenth full length studio album, the band's sound remains as dark and as multi-layered as it's ever been.
Autonomous Zone kicks things off with a droning keyboard and some rather distant sounding vocals before the guitars start to crunch and the drums start to pound. Thirty-five seconds into and the band hits their mark and sound great. There's a fair bit of effects work over Coleman's vocals here, it sounds somewhat mechanical, but it fits the mood of the song and the lyrics rather well.
Dawn Of The Hive is a more aggressive, industrial style track with some weird techno bits tossed into the mix. The guitars are WAY up front here and sound great, but the production is cold, clinical and mechanical - on purpose, likely, - giving things a weird tone. But Killing Joke have always been about weird tone, so it fits. New Cold War is more of the same, a sort of dark and morose sounding dancy-industrial barrage of noise and melody swirled together in a fairly chaotic stew of sound. There's a lot going on in the mix, at times it feels like the different players are going off in different directions but then they bring it back to a more cohesive sound only to do it all over again.
Euphoria is a fast-paced and very keyboard heavy track heavy on melody. It sounds good but it's a little too pop sounding when compared with the other songs on the record. It's not a bad track and when you consider its title maybe this works, but it doesn't grab you like some of the better songs on this record do. New Jerusalem starts out with some droney keyboards and it sort of meanders around a bit… it's dull. At least at first, but that changes when everyone goes off at the same time, resulting in a fairly massive, heavy, brooding sound over which Coleman delivers the most sinister and intense vocal delivery you get out of the ten tracks included on Pylon.
The second half of the record starts off with War On Freedom, a politically relevant song heavy on keyboard and guitar but a little weak with its drum sound. Coleman sounds good here, it's a mid-tempo track with solid playing and a fairly catchy chorus but it might have worked better if it were more aggressive. Lyrically the track is pretty angry but the music doesn't reflect that. Big Buzz could easily be a Billy Bragg song if it doesn't have the pounding keyboards and fuzzed out guitars going on - it's a pop song at heart and a super catchy one at that. On the lighter side of what you'd expect from Killing Joke but a good song regardless.
Delete goes back into darker, heavier, more electronic sounding industrial territory, providing a driving backbeat with cold, mechanical guitar playing and fairly pounding drums. It relies a lot on repetition but there are moments where the song breaks free from that and those moments are both eerie and bizarre. I Am The Virus is one of the stand out tracks on the record, one of the more punk inspired numbers played fast and a little more loose in style than the electronically influenced style they're none for. It also features some gang vocals and weird effects over the chorus. The album's closer, Into The Unknown, is a reasonably melodic piece, again with some keyboards up front alongside the guitars in the mix. It's fast, aggressive but not overdone and it's indicative of the sound that the band has been using for the last few albums.
Note that although there are tend songs included on the version of the album sent for review, there is a 'deluxe edition' also available that include five additional songs - Apotheosis / Plague / Star Spangled / Panopticon / Snakedance (Youth Rattlesnake Dub Remix). As they weren't provided for review we've obviously got no clue if they're any good or not but the ten song standard edition of Pylon should offer Killing Joke fans reason enough to be happy. The album offers up enough of material done in their tried and true sound to offer familiarity but so too does it allow them, rightly, to experiment a bit. It doesn't always work perfectly but more often than not it does work very well. Almost forty years on and this band still sounds great, Pylon is proof positive of that.
