New Wave Outpost Forum

Have no idea how I totally missed the boat with them. Just getting into their stuff. Any recommendations?

"You just pick a chord, go twang, and you've got music." ~ Sid Vicious

IMHO most would say to start with "Killing Joke" (1st album) and "Nighttime" (5th album). They are two very different sounding Jokes but represent the band very nicely.

I personally love "Whats THIS For?", the second album and find it nearly as compelling as the first one. I also dig "Ha", a live EP they put out somewhere between their third and fourth albums.

Great band but not necessarily a band who made great albums.

BUUUUT, since some of their singles are friggin' amazing I'd suggest picking up some of their compilations. If you can't find their Singles Box set they have two interesting comps "Wilful Days" and "Laugh? I Nearly Bought One". Although far from perfect both compliment each other and tell their erratic story quite well.

They are New Wave in our country.

And i love Adorations.

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All of their Early to Mid 80's albums - their first six, and their excellent return to form in the 90's, Extremities, Dirt, and Various Repressed Emotions are all great. Very powerful stuff!

Tread carefully, though with Brighter than a Thousand Suns and Outside the Gate. The ideas may still be there, but the production got a little too slick for my tastes, although I have been warming up to them a little since my first listens. Still, Jaz's vocals still remain powerful on those albums.

My favourite Killing Joke albums are the first three: "Killing Joke", "What's This For" and "Revelations". Number four, "Fire Dances", was not too bad either but marked the start of a period in which their music became more polished and lost much of its initial appeal.

They split and reformed a couple of times and their most recent releases (since "Killing Joke" from 2003) are pretty good again, though I know people who think they're "too metal" nowadays. The opposite is true, really: it's the metal scene that moved towards a Killing Joke type of sound and not the other way round.

Killing Joke was one of the first "new wave bands" I ever saw live. Must be back in 1983 or so. Singer Jaz Coleman managed to scare the shit out of you in those days. Hard to believe he's got a second life as a classical trained director of symphonic orchestras.