Killing Joke
Laugh? I Nearly Bought One!

THE REVIEW

The act of stuffing one's mouth with words thicker than their own meaning seems to take shape in the extreme (and fashionable) lexical sports where today's youngsters find the true taste of "existing." Problems with television? Hmm. Yet, someone once reminded us (right in our beloved peninsula) that "neon signs attract simpletons..."

Killing Joke. A name brushed off recently, a nostalgic name for some, an Arabic alphabet for others. Enigmatic group. Just a lanky Dave Grohl, and there they are, everyone with their heads back in the eighties. Princesses with teased hair made in 2005, post-adolescent baby-punk/philo/anxiolytic waiting for fairy-tale syntheses regarding new drugs to buy with the money daddy earns every day, convinced they may elevate the state of their Saturday/evening (and they do, very(?)), all offended by decomposing clothes to buy new, fresh, with a pure sticky sheen... BANG! Here we are back in the Eighties!

Dramaturgy aside, the album in question consists of a well-defined collection of what were the main hits that made famous one of the most important English bands, if not even fundamental, in the evolution of the hybrid rock-industrial of the '80s, which later led to the NIN, albeit tardily. Now, the problem lies in making people understand that before NIN, Killing Joke churned out masterpieces that remained practically "leafed through" like "Revelations", "Night Time", and the raw and animal-expropriating "Killing Joke LP". These I just mentioned are albums, not butterflies of fog: steel pistons. They really existed, truly, at least as much as the eighties.

In short: the "trick" that allowed the emergence of this seemingly despicable band turned out to be the lethal mix they executed, initially creating a hybrid between Pére Ubu and the American New Wave, tearing and chanting in a singular and especially peculiar way the synths (as much as the guitars) in a way I believe to be much more "s"despicable, as well as apocalyptic, than groups like Clash, Europe and every imaginable kind of pleasure-porn-muzik that was beginning to shatter the sexual as well as burning dreams of thousands of yuppies with time-calibrated attire. Now, the utility of listing: the number/name of the tracks, the state of late bewilderment, and all those pounding and lacerating voices that such recording provokes in me, is virtually none. What I am trying to emphasize is the listening: Killing Joke. Not Simóne Le Bon. Killing Joke. Not "The Apple of My Eye" (Neither 1 nor 2).

KILLING JOKE. NOT (!!!) "Reality" by Richard Sande.

One of the few groups born unintentionally as well as spontaneously to unmask the anti-personality that invaded the eighties, triggering a perpetual motion of invisible perception, obscured and elucidated by carbonated drinks filled with strong active principles of asbestos, rigid PVC, or high-density polyethylene. The sole video-clips, like that of "Eighties", are the minimalist and symbolist proof of the blood that scratched the veins of the people of the time. Dark years.

KILLING JOKE.

Believe me, there's not much to laugh about.