Hossanas From The Basement Of Hell - Killing Joke > Reviews (1)

The last few years have been a busy and fruitful time for Killing Joke what with a fantastic album released in 2003, numerous tours and a recent 25th anniversary. This new Opus of theirs was recorded in the basement of the Faust Building, Prague. The band Jaz Coleman (Keyboards and Vocals), Geordie Walker (Guitar), Paul Raven (Bass) and newish boy Benny Calvert (Drums) adopted a live approach to the recording, so that the recording actually sounded like a band playing. Geordie dislikes multi-tracking layers of guitars preferring to use one live take, and as a result hated their self titled 2003 album. I have to agree with the sentiment as the one flaw that the last album had was that it did not sound like a band playing together. So I am happy to hear that they have gone back to the old ways of setting up and playing capturing the resultant sound on tape, none of this recording straight to hard disk nonsense.

What you get on this release is exactly what you'd expect from Killing Joke, with Benny stealing the show, his drumming being absolutely frantic, added to that are Raven's low end rumblings on bass and Geordies unique guitar sound. The overall sound harks back to their sound in the early 80's being tribal primitive and trance inducing. The production is full despite the lack of overdubbing, and shows that they are at their most powerful when playing as live as it is possible to in a studio.

The stuff that stands out, most is the opening track "This Tribal Antidote" which shows them at their anthemic best with a return to a more spiritual Killing Joke as Jaz roars his mantras. "Hosannas From The Basement Of Hell" is them at their tribal best and Ravens bass is particularly brutal, whilst Geordie weaves guitar riffs all over the place, the man really deserves to be up their alongside the likes of Jimmy Page and Hendrix as one of the greatest rock guitarists of the 20th century. "Walking With Gods" with its trance like guitar and rhythm blasts could easily be translated into a bit of brutal hardcore techno, But then Killing Joke were never afraid to dally with dance music in the past, ant at over 8 minutes long it would have even the most hardcore rave goer struggling to keep up. "implosion" had one reviewer saying that it sounded the closest to a car crash you could get and he is probably right; this is them at their best.

It is not all great though "Invocation" which features Strings arranged and composed by Jaz just does not quite work, even though it has lovely eastern polyrythms smattered along it.

The lyrics on the album as less overtly political and more spiritual than they were on the previous album, which reflects the time we are living in. Someone once described Killing Joke as being hateful to me, I immediately put them right explaining that aggressive music is not necessarily in any way shape or form hateful, especially Killing Joke whose music is a catharsis and at times deeply spiritual, and by god at this time we need some catharsis more than ever.

No matter what I say here faithful Killing Joke fans like me will buy this record and form their own opinions of it. For me it definitely up their in the top 5 Killing Joke Albums. All I can say that if you like the likes of Ministry, and Nine Inch Nails and other band that fly under the flag of industrial rock then this is one of the Killing Joke albums I would recommend you to listen to, if not then it probably isn't for you.