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Rating: After the gradual incursion of their discography into multi-instrumental and overly intellectual realms starting with the memorable "Night Time", 1990 marks the return of Killing Joke to the international music scene with a double album of provocative, controversial tones that are angrier than ever.
"Extremities, dirt and various repressed emotions" is a work of frightening intensity, endowed with evocative powers that few have managed to reformulate later on, though it has often been attempted to imitate. A dozen tracks that revisit and update themes and styles from their golden era, the most experimental one - if you will - that at the beginning of the '80s permanently marked the territory of the post-punk wave.
The God of Money, greed, civil struggle, solitude, the memories of another childhood: these are the contents on which Jaz Coleman and company hit hard, dragging the listener into a vortex of truly extreme sensations built on hammering syncopated rhythms, tortured guitars, verses screamed like battle cries. There is no room for heartfelt reflection, except in the episode of "Solitude," a remarkable ballad with a post-apocalyptic flavor that leads to the Arabic instrumental "Kaliyuga" and the final explosion of "Struggle". The horizons towards which the gaze is directed for almost the entire album are those stormy of desert oases swept by the wind, of metropolitan profiles bloodied by the law of profit, of living cemeteries populated by the zombies of the modern era.
More than in albums already rough like "What's this for..." and "Revelations" that years before tried to shape the suburban magma of punk, here the approach of the British band with the sound becomes a search for new harmonic and rhythmic paths: Martin Atkins' counterpoints (formerly a drummer with PIL) that subvert vague jazz echoes to aggressively pour them into metal, the sharp keyboards underlying Geordie Walker's schizophrenic and extremely compact guitar riffs, Coleman's beastly vocalizations bordering on cardiac arrest that overshadow the sensation of a radioactive wind permeating the entire album. The lesson of the previous "Outside the Gate" - which was a conceptual digression with almost art-rock undertones - seems to have stimulated the Killing Joke to throw themselves back into the fray to reassert the idea of a world that should reset itself, aligning with the law of nature; and no longer fighting with the weapon of reason and dialectics, but with teeth and nails.
Thus, absolutely overwhelming songs like "Intravenous", "North of the Border", "Age of Greed" seize the listener's guts and lead in a swirling crescendo to the final declaration of "Struggle", an unyielding ride speaking of a creed of life never renounced by Killing Joke: the struggle is hard, the struggle is long, the struggle is beautiful.
Masterpiece.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Money Is Not Our God (05:16)
Nine tenths of the law that is sick
Is possesion
Life expressed in matter is a blasphemy
Success defined by aquisition stinks!
So busy trying to make a living i forgot about living
Yes i do
So busy trying to make a living i forget about life
The best things i found in life were my birthright
Green fields mean more to me than a brand new car
Will you swap your hi-fi for a clear blue sky?
Will you cash in all your shares for gods clean air?
Is your answer yes,or no,to these painful truths?
Is your answer yes,or no,to these painful truths?
Do you grovel to your master?
Do you beg like a dog?
First things first,repeat to yourself
Ahhh money!, money is not our god!
Mine!
The best things in life are free
Mine!
I own the beach and the blazing sunset
Mine!
I own the waves and the fresh air
Mine!
I drink the milk of the stars in this beautiful moment
Say to yourself
All these things are mine!
Repeat after me!
Money's not our god
Do you grovel to your master?
Do you beg like a dog?
First things first,repeat to yourself
Ahhh money!
02 Age of Greed (07:23)
Ten percent of the land
Is the hand that pulls the strings
Be the privileged few (to have to own to hold)
Power over the people yes yes
Power over people
Be the privileged few to have to own to hold
Money property assets before lives
Green gestures of a dying planet
An endless debate only too late
An appetite for glutony
The only way is up the only way is up
But when you are up you have to try and stay there
So you stamp and cheat on people
Champagne breakfats (rewards for the killing)
And a fast waist bulging
Indulging, in what you call good living
But most of all there is too much fat on your heart - pig
A lifestyle of cholesterol
Cross collateralized cholesterol
Saving what's left from profit margin
For what?
I'll tell you what for
For some irrelevant conscience easing charity - Why?
Just to justify! Just to justify!
Look at this utopia
A society based on solid foundations
Educate our children - educate them well
To feather the nest and fuck the rest
(Yes yes feather thenest and fuck the rest)
The waste expands
(As your waist expands)
While others stand at the back of the queue
I mean you
Still the same old security
For your creature comforts
Exchanging the hours of your life
For the cash you've already spent
Eating rubbish so you can pay the rent
Table wine once a week if you'relucky
In comparison
Privatise the people's lives
Be part of the company (or fade!)
The appliance of science to privatise their lives
Water is our business
Electricity is our business
Gas is our business
Lives are our business
Business is our business
Your money - my time
Your stinking industrial bathwater - my wine
Imbalance induces hate
How will you fill the gap
Between the endless buffet
And the scraps of food I have
I feel hate I feel hate
I feel hate I feel hate
(Don't be afraid to show your hate, hate!)
You just treat me like a commodity
You didn't know I couldn't even afford to feed my family
I just want to kill
I just want to take a gun
And put it to your head
And pull the trigger
03 The Beautiful Dead (05:57)
The crowd was one (oblivion ran deep)
A consciousness of cannon-fodder walking in its sleep
Vacant expressions (and don't look ahead)
Everybody dance with the beautiful dead I said!
All queue up and gravel for a hit
SOmeone pulls the reins then you chew at the bit
Encouraged by commercials to spend beyond my means
I laughed as it all fell apart at the seams
(Hey! Take a look at tomorrow)
But will I inherit the good green earth?
Such a lovely world
All mod-cons there was dust on the drums
My electronic beat-box got the job done
Everybody emulate the pulse of the soul
And change your clothes (to make you feel old)
Effort and sweat was a thing of the past (they said!)
Welcome to the world of the beautiful dead
04 Extremities (05:19)
Extremities confusing me
Affect me night and day
Fascinated, devastated
Critical decade
Vanishing greenery
Changing scenery
Yet somehow I accept
Extremities confusing me
Yet somehow I accept
White heat (I watch a meltdown)
Cut the wood against the grain
Pleasure - pain (one word)
Extremities
I'm frightened
I'm excited
And I cannot differenciate between the two
(Can you?)
Each and every one of us is watching for the signs
The days go by we count the moments
The moments of our lives
All the time all the time
The earthquakes came and the buildings all fell down
(And the waves I saw, I saw the people slowly drown)
Yes the sun grew hot and the children dehydrate
I saw the soldiers burn
I saw their skin just blister and break
Each and everyone of us is counting out the
Moments of our lives all the time
06 Inside the Termite Mound (07:49)
By day we're dormant
Because it's too hot outside now
Nocturnal notions (as we leave or cocoons)
Antennae tuned to inuman vibrations
Shading the cities of the world to come
I listen to the sound, the endless construction
Inside the termite mound
I walked past the nursery
All the children have gone now
(The rules we taught them are what they've become)
Move past the people (they make me feel so indifferent)
Serving their purpose
It's their purpose to serve
A thousand lights from this hneycombed labyrinth
These winding tunnels lead to my place of desire
Bars and bazaars of self-gratification
Live to consume
Live for momentary pleasures
I listen to the sound, the endless construction
Inside the termite mound.
08 North of the Border (05:52)
Scrape my nails across a brick
I'll describe my mornings in the early hours
My pulses are racing, my heart beats out loud
I am north of the border (and I'm cold and I sweat)
And I worry I worry what tomorrow will bring
Scrape my nails across a brick
I walk north of the border and step over the line
To a place of frustration (going out of my mind)
I've tried wearing bright colours to brighten my life
But the truth cuts through fashion, it cuts like a knife
Just look at our faces, yes they say more than words
We're so lost in our problems
We're so lost in our world
Yesterday - nothing
But today is o.k. - I've enough to survive on
Tomorrow's another day
Scrape my nails across a brick
09 Slipstream (07:07)
Time means nothing
Time means nothing to me anymore
Twenty years ago
Twenty years ago and yesterday
All the same to me all the same to me
Yes all the same
Time means nothing
Time means nothing to me anymore
I shut my eyes a second ago
And I was only eight years old
Lying on my back in the sun
Listening to the sound of children playing
And I remember all my thoughts
(thinking how beautiful life was)
So wonderful to be young
So beautiful to be young
Rememebring how, how to be young
One by one, all my friends died
And my body decayed
Time means nothing
Time means nothing to me anymore
I close my eyes, I was learning
A lesson somewhere else
I shut my eyes, I was learning
A lesson somewhere else
Time means nothing
Time means nothing to me anymore
Slipstream
Time means nothing to me anymore
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Other reviews
By Danny The Kid
'Extremities... is an album that exalts to the fullest the shamanic and preachy charisma of Jaz Coleman, a stentorian, gloomy, evocative voice, an industrial Jim Morrison.'
'An album of denunciation, intense, strong, vibrant, direct, exciting... which closes with Jaz's liberating laughter, aware of having hit the mark, once again.'
