Killing Joke (EG/Malicious Damage)

I'm always remembering this record as much more harsh and aggressive than it actually is. I blame the cover artwork, a masterpiece of bleak dystopia, which makes even Crass records seem cuddly by comparison.  The photos are actually taken from actual uprisings in Northern Ireland, so the spirit of unrest is prevalent throughout Killing Joke. This stark monochrome presentation, the weird typeface for the song titles which looks backwards until you squint and see it's not, and the presence of synthesisers are factors which probably cause me to remember this as some sort of Ministry-like wall of industrial noise, or even sounding a little like Big Black. That's not really true, as the opener 'Requiem' actually has some new wave residue and the songs tend to favour soaring, majestic vocals. So each time I listen to this, somewhat less often than once per year, I'm reminded that it's not as scary or nasty as I thought – which is not to say it lacks 'tude. It's a confident debut by a band who amassed a decent career, though I never heard any of their subsequent music, content as I am with my incorrect conception. 'The Wait' is the closest to my memory's image, a punchy stomper with growled vocals, and it's followed up by 'Complications', where the vocalist's English accent is most prevalent, poking out form the echo effects. 'Bloodsport' brings in a somewhat infectious rhythm and the synths punctuate buzzsaw guitars which amass into something, well, rather accessible. It's not hard to imagine this playing in a disco for drunk youngsters, at least in an interesting disco. I am 99% sure I chronicled this anecdote before somewhere on this blog but it's too funny not to mention again: In my high school, there was a kid who wrote band names on his notebook and jacket, to be cool, even though he didn't actually listen to to the bands, which made him the ultimate early 90s sinner - a 'poseur'. Anyway, he would frequently get the band names wrong, mostly just misspellings like 'IRON MAYDEN' or whatever, but I remember he had written 'KILLER JOKE' on either his notebook or jacket, I don't remember which, and, well, that's the whole story. But KILLER JOKE is a great band name, an even better one than Killing Joke. 

J.D. - 'Warsaw' (RZM Productions)

The band mysteriously known only as 'J.D.' chose not to release these recordings, which is understandable; they're the dictionary definition of 'raw', in terms of recording, performance and composition. This is punk rock, though - the year '1977' has been mythologised by the mohicans and their descendents, or maybe it was '78 when these were recorded - I dunno for sure, but the anger is sure there. The band that was to follow shed a lot of these influences, making this little more than a curiosity for diehard fans (which I'm not) or for people who revel in early, raw obscurity. As the record progresses it starts to get closer to the Factory sound, but side one has a surprising amount  of chugga-chugga punk rock. The opening cut ('All Of This For You') is great in a primitive way and sets a tone that doesn't sustain itself throughout, as if this is sequnced in the chronological order of how it was written. 'Failures' has a Stooges-like sound, and 'Novelty', though later reinvented as a much more well-known song, is delivered vocally like it's the Descendents or other early 80s American HC act. Reportedly they were unhappy with post-production techniques, but I'm not sure any are evident here - this is rough sounding, maybe because of the bootleg mastering job, or maybe this wasn't actually the album they intended. Omission can sometimes be a good career move; as much as 'Transmission', 'Interzone' and 'Living in the Ice Age' foreshadow what was to come, certainly the myth was amplified by holding these back. The Hooks and crannies are already obvious, the early synth pulses ('No Love Lost') and the overly dour vibe, but the vocals are the main thing that are not quite there yet.  They're angry, yes, and captivated by strange ideas of isolation and collectivity, images of war and order ('Leaders of Men', 'They Walked in Line') no doubt a byproduct of the late 70s British culture and the difficulties of the economic reality of the time. Manchester was a hell of a lot further away from London culturally than geographically; its hard to see this occupying the same stratosphere as the whole Sex Pistols/Vivienne Westwood/Siouxsie aesthetic at the same time, but it technically did. If it reminds me of any London band it would be Killing Joke's first album, which we'll get to soon. But maybe this is a solid document of what they would have been like live - a bit more raw, the drums flailing rather than crisp.

The Germs - '(GI)' (Slash)

I never understood the title of this or why the parentheses/brackets are part of it. This is an iconic record in every possible way - the sound, the artwork, the premature death of the vocalist .... yet it never jumped out at me as revolution-inspiring. I, of course, tend to gravitate towards smart-guy punk like Wire or Alternative TV, at least as a younger man. These days, the fury of the Germs is something I connect with, though maybe in a nostalgic way for some life I never led. The lyrics are of course the best part, but not included here and not always so decipherable, so the Internet is helpful here, though I tend to focus on clunkers like 'Embracing my life / between your thighs' rather than the moments that are way intelligent and poetic. Crash's words deal with (among other things) the role of the self against the emergence of technology, the existence and viscerality of the body, and power relationships between people and systems. Which is not to dismiss the rest of the band - Pat Smear is somehow still an underrated guitar player, and his lines snake and crawl around Crash's delivery, which is what Carducci would write is great rock music (and he's right!).  The Germs are a classic case of a band that remains influential for the wrong reasons, but when you watch their performance in The Decline of Western Civilization the power of this band becomes abundantly clear. The record doesn't downplay it towards new wave or pop production sensibilities like so many other records of the time, which is a credit. And they put the short fast songs on side 1 and leave the slightly longer ones for the second side, which was a pretty good move, I'd say. 'Another day, another crash' is a lyric from 'The Other Newest One', perhaps Darby's titular line, and while the backstage footage in Spheeris's film shows him to be a confused and sad kid, here he sounds the force of pure nihilism come to life. It's heavy without being metal (it's a single guitar band, after all), and the songs are as sophisticated as they can be given the self-imposed boundaries. ''We Must Bleed' is pretty fucking incredible, and leaps out of the speakers with a cutthroat monotony. Songs such as 'Communist Eyes' actually have some pop hooks buried in them - the Germs were punk, not hardcore, at least to these ears, and that's a crucial distinction. And maybe that's what remains so valuable about (GI) thirty-seven years later - the idea of punk is manifested not by his sad death (which, to be honest, is the kind of death that defines clichés) but by the force that he became when put behind a microphone, on stage, and even in the studio.