King maker's single “When Lucy’s Down” was produced and recorded by Pat Collier at his Greenhouse studio near Old Street in London in 1991, the very same Producer and studio responsible for The Wonder Stuff’s first two album so of course we were interested in having a listen. And what a single it was. We all trooped off to see them at the ULU and before you knew it Kingmaker were announced as the main support on the Wonder Stuff’s December 1991 “Sleigh The UK Winter Tour”. As a result I got to know them well and, when schedules allowed, worked on their crew on a number of UK tours.

They were a 3 piece which drew me to them immediately, an incredibly powerful live band, drummer John Andrew is one of the best I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. They wrote brutally honest and in some ways confrontational songs. I thought they were gonna be massive which probably cursed them from the off as my track record in that department ain’t great, sorry chaps (see Eat, Jellyfish etc. for proof). “Eat Yourself Whole” was their debut album released in 1991. Sadly my vinyl copy is largely unplayable due to the labels being stamped into the actual vinyl rather than where they should be in the middle, who knows what was happening at the pressing plant that day, so we’ll talk about it here, just briefly.

Drummer John Andrew was a big part of Kingmakers sound along with Liz Hardy’s guitar playing. Their songs were big and loud, see “Really Scrape The Sky” and “High As A Kite”. My favourites on here are two of the more sedate songs, “Freewheeling” and “Hard Times”…and after typing that I’ve just crashed into the realisation after 32 years that “Freewheling” isn’t on the vinyl version of this album, only on the CD…what were they thinking ?

I worked with Kingmaker on and off up until 1995 when we all went off and did other things. I had occasional contact with John and bass player Myles Howell but Loz seemed to disappear off the edge off the earth. I’d hear 4th hand tales of him living in a certain BritPop lady singers basement or he was in Europe somewhere teaching English. So it was fantastic back in August when a picture appeared on Facebook showing all three of them sitting around somebody’s dining room table drinking red wine and smiling. I liked Kingmaker a lot…

Hard Times - https://youtu.be/dnLki4x94sQ?si=Ed-MgLOK7Ux0hwiT

4 LP’s, one Yellow, one Red, one Clear and one Black vinyl…of course I had to have it ! Nothing clever or complicated here, it’s a chronological presentation of KJ’s singles from 1979 to 2012. It does exactly what a singles compilation should do. 

You can tell a lot about a band from their singles collection. Killing Joke’s early singles like “Wardance”, “Requiem” and “Empire Song” did as much as anyone to define Post-Punk. “Follow The Leaders” raged against the times and shifted the protest to the dancefloor. The “Night Time” era singles tempered some of their extremes and introduced them to a fresh audience, some of whom will have been along for the ride ever since.

Killing Joke are a treasure and over the years have perhaps not been accorded the respect they deserve. They are cited as influences and have been covered by bands including Rammstein, Metallica <spit>, Fear Factory, Prong and Helmet. It’s about time they were given their dues and this collection goes a long way to explaining why that should be so.

Follow The Leader - https://youtu.be/uPWQfAv_qBQ?si=XRDa1iu1yH1i_cTC

A lot of artists release eponymous albums. Not many artists release two eponymous albums. Killing Joke’s debut album in 1983 was titled “Killing Joke” and so was this, their 11th studio album released in 2003. The copy I own is a 2021 re-issue on lovely Purple vinyl. Now there are many reasons for getting excited about a new Killing Joke album, it’s new music for a start off and the anticipation of whether Geordie can add to his stunning collection of pummelling riffs being a couple I can think of. It seems a lot of people got excited about this one purely because some bloke who used to be in a 3 piece band from Seattle played drums on it. Oh well, I guess there’s a chance that some new KJ converts were made.

Let’s get something else cleared up, some people describe this as KJ’s “heavy metal” album…it’s not, OK ? Heavy Metal is mindless fretw@nk concerned with dragons, girls, drinking and singing about itself. This is Killing Joke a band with a mission, a purpose and something to say, about as different from the schoolboy themes of Heavy Metal as it’s possible to get. 

A thing that likely doesn’t get levelled at Killing Joke very often is that, occasionally, between all the brain crushing riffage they write bloody good pop songs and this albums “You’ll Never Get To Me” is one of them. It wasn’t issued as a single but it should have been, it’s got hit written all over it to my ears (I do appreciate that my ears are significantly different to most other people’s and this wouldn’t be the first time something I thought had hit written all over it disappeared without a trace).Ultimately though this is a Killing Joke album, they’re really not going to move far from what they do and do very well. 

I suppose I have to address the drumming. Bassist Youth had met Dave Grohl, a long time KJ fan, while KJ were sans drummer and he expressed a desire to play on their album. The original idea was to to have 3 different drummers on the record, Grohl, John Dolmayan (System Of A Down) and Danny Carey (Tool), but when Dave Grohl heard the songs he wanted to do all of it. In a highly back to front move the band recorded the album (presumably with a drum machine) and Grohl recorded the drums last, in one 5 day session in LA. Band and drummer never played together. I don’t know whether it’s my low opinion of Grohl and his meagre “talents” that colours my thoughts here, but it sounds like it. When all is taken into account he really ain’t no Big Paul Ferguson.

“Killing Joke (2023]” is heavy, loud and filled with a righteous fury about the state of the world we’ve built and are responsible for. Rolling Stone magazine rated it a 2 out of 5 saying “all the humorless gloom and doom feels oppressive after a while” which is a better explanation for why I’ve never read Rolling Stone magazine than anything I could write. 

You'll Never Get To Me - https://youtu.be/54t9Qw4EEEM?si=b_BVp4M32WZ9Hl6F