Turn to red: the legendary Killing Joke slay Birmingham

There are bands, and there are cults. There are concerts, and there are religious experiences. There are fanbases, and there are devout followers. 

There is an endless void, and there is Killing Joke.

Those wise enough to make this distinction and spend All Hallows' Eve crammed into Birmingham's Institute enjoyed a rollicking set of the Joke's special brand of indescribable purifying noise: cackling over the end of the world and presenting landscapes drawn from a sonic palette so indefatigably punishing and relentlessly brutal that it is, in its own way, unerringly beautiful. 

Touring in support of their fifteenth album, the shit-kicking Pylon, Killing Joke - returned to their original line-up after bassist Paul Raven's untimely passing, with a rare Absent Friends dedicated to him - take to the stage then take the stage itself, their autonomous zone for the night. 

Ploughing through an exploratory career-hopping set, due reverence is given to their position as venerable statesmen, with the tunes to match: a suitably boinging Eighties is judderingly relevant, despite being older than some of the crowd (hello). Pandemonium closes the set, after the likes of Turn to Red going toe-to-toe with the assault of newer cuts. 

Theirs is a tribal-industrial lot - if forced to categorize - pummelling the Institute and instigating a two-way energy exchange. Bassist Youth lighting incense sticks or whatever the fuck it was christ I'm tired who reads this shit anyway was a touching addition. 

Love Like Blood and Requiem, two foremost set staples, are tucked inside the middle of the set for once. Security lies in the understanding that the band could fart them through a kazoo and the respective gorgeous ache and fantastic stomp of these two would still transmit, and still incite no less applause. 



After thirty-eight (thousand?) years in the game, frontman Jaz Coleman is also no less the most hypnotic frontman of his generation. Still keeping any heel-snapping newcomers at bay, looking away is an impossible task as it is searingly clear from his expressions that every word carries megatons of weight, delivered accordingly. 

Guitarist Geordie Walker, meanwhile, is a mystery no easier to figure out even when working a few feet away. Chordal oddness and sheer inventiveness mixes with a guitar sound that is completely and utterly unmistakable, with bludgeoning riffing giving way to effortlessly illustrated textures, housed inside great cathedrals of sound, making his underrated status all the more criminal. 

Geordie Walker's Gibson ES-295: a conduit to chaotic noise

There are precious few acts where each and every member makes their mark through sheer force of personality as well as musical and technical skill. Skinsman 'Big' Paul Ferguson emits kidney-puncturing beats, perfectly undercutting the band's sound and quite possibly vibrationally eroding the venue's infrastructure. Aforementioned Martin 'Youth' Glover's driving bass dances around it wonderfully, fulfilling an overall sound that is, upon reflection, something not to be repeated. 


It is sobering to think of the oft-cited bands who Killing Joke left a (claw) mark on - the likes of Metallica, Tool, and Nine Inch Nails may command bigger audiences and their own degrees of fan loyalty, but know this: there will only ever be one Killing Joke, with an unrivalled intensity and singular identities of sound. Miss them at your absolute peril.

Still laughing: Killing Joke return with the incendiary 'Pylon'

Every few years, with the state of Planet Earth sinking utterly beyond satire and parody in its Nineteen Eighty-Five-on-steroids ruination, a certain collective pause to pass scathing comment upon it. This acidic dissent comes courtesy of messrs Jaz Coleman, Martin 'Youth' Glover, Geordie Walker and Big Paul Ferguson, trading unclassifiable apocalyptic disco-metal as the legendary and influential Killing Joke.

"Living outside of the grid is our goal! Misery lies at the heart of control," blares Coleman, resuming duties as messenger from the atomic wasteland in Autonomous Zone. Killing Joke's ideals are everlastingly precious and increasingly sensible, and are more often than not wielded as a bludgeoning device with which to beat some sense and wordly awareness into the listener.

And bludgeon, they certainly do: Ferguson commands a legion of skin-thwacking undercurrents that piercingly punctuates each nuclear missive, driven by Youth's submarine bass. Guitarist Geordie Walker's unique stringsmanship, an integral part of the Killing Joke sound since its inception, acutely divides his time between blunt-force-trauma riffing and wonderfully bleak soundscapes, matching Coleman's fustrated railings against mankind's descent.

Their knack for an immediately discernible and danceable tune is gratifyingly present and correct, with Euphoria and New Cold War proudly representing the band's fearless forays past the punk label in a time-honoured willingness to explore other avenues and nuke them.

Their primal ferocity is entirely compounded, aided and abetted by the same slickness that so enriched predecessor album MMXII. This production sheen may lend a slight cleanliness to the sound, but it in no way distils the message, like a celebrated film director employing modern touches to realise the artistic vision with greater clarity.

As is to be expected of such a self-aware and consistently thoughtful act like the 'Joke, the persistent question of mortality pervades (see also: Iron Maiden). Big Buzz also expertly treads between joyous anthem and teary emotion-trigger. A sense of celebration is one of their several alluring aspects, and this track harks back to the likes of On All Hallow's Eve, Honour the Fire and even Gratitude, where the doomishness is countered by Killing Joke's great sense of occasion: the self-styled Gathering.

In another parallel to Iron Maiden, they present their first double-disc studio effort. The second 'half' of Pylon, while feeling slightly like a tugboat trailing behind a battleship, still packs in four righteously furious pieces. It oddly ends with a remix of Snakedance, the original being curiously absent from the album. This prevents Pylon from sharing the sense of end-to-end completeness that MMXII had. Yet, Pylon has the key advantage of the expansiveness of double albums, and an abundance of such searingly strong music is not to be complained about.

With this, their fifteenth half-spat-half-sung commentary on a world continuing to circle the drain, Killing Joke have proven, once again, that the last laugh is theirs. Pylon is the mutated flower that grows through irradiated concrete: glimpses of ironic beauty in a diseased, dying landscape.

New Street station: Pret-a-Manger cannot address the station's issues

Birmingham's long-awaited new Grand Central shopping centre, plonked unceremoniusly on top of New Street station, has been open now for some time. The second city's denizens have had sufficient time to give themselves undue neck-ache looking at the giant boil of a glass ceiling, before an irate and late traveller almost knocks them flat while hurrying for their train.

Social media has, so far, been kind: likening the new money-sucking endeavour as having the potential to rival Manchester Piccadilly and London St. Pancras in the travel/shopping experience stakes.

However, this is swept away by the experience the travellers actually have before reaching New Street and when boarding a train at it. Aside from whitening several platforms and walls, adding staircases and suchlike, what has actually happened to the station itself? You know, the station-y bit of the station. Where the trains actually come in and out, and people vie for comfortable standing-spaces in their vestibules.

Having been likened to a dungeon in the past, you'd think lashings of lolly would have been targeted at making the sub-level experience slightly less hellish. But no: the price Brummies pay for having a truly city-centre station (an admitted benefit) is still ongoing - and the dark, miserable trains-and-tracks bit is still as unedifying as ever.

Trains still jostle for platform space, evidenced by the waiting game played by every fifth train attempting to enter New Street. Rolling stock is still barely covering the requirements.

Tossing a few wanderers into the paths of hurrying commuters and adorning the building with a frankly hideous array of reflective nonsense will not allay the worsening bottleneck. These problems can only worsen, too, given general reluctance to procure new trains, along with the other time-honoured chestnuts - growing population numbers, growing passenger levels, etc.

It is frankly laughable to consider Manchester Piccadilly and London St. Pancras to New Street. For those who have yet to visit these, it is almost advisable not to as New Street will only worsen in comparison. Out of the capital's numerous terminals and large-scale stations, perhaps New Street is on a par with Euston, being a similar sardine-ramming concrete assault (con)course.

Euston aside, London still has the delights of Paddington, King's Cross, the aforementioned St. Pancras as well as Victoria. Each of these, whilst perhaps not intricately comparable to New Street due to various factors, are spacious and welcoming spaces.

So, what's to be done about New Street? Trains can only lengthened so much, platforms less so. If HS2 wasn't on the horizon, a satellite station of sorts could be built in the place of the planned Curzon Street terminus, with certain services' inter-connectivity sacrificed.

No envy emanates from this quarter for those charged with finding such solutions. Thankfully, we also have the gloriously retro and tasteful Moor Street, sadly beaten down by its neighbouring Snow Hill, the bastard concrete spawn of New Street. An online perusal at 1960s-era Snow Hill is a painful experience, as it less resembles a fallout shelter and more an attractive travel hub/venue.

With the exciting Midland Metro expansion and the HS2 terminus planned, we cannot afford to have any weak links in Birmingham's idealised city connectivity. Making New Street's platform levels attractive, however, may be akin to planting plastic flowers in Mordor.

Review: Steven Wilson, Royal Albert Hall

As far as victory laps go, Steven Wilson's hot-ticket successive sets at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall stand aloft like two giant middle fingers: for the humble bespectacled audio-wizard has enjoyed a fantastic new chapter in a musical career already jam-packed with the kind of accomplishments many musicians would kill for.

After impressing all concerned with 2013's rightly acclaimed The Raven That Refused to Sing, Wilson did it all over again with his latest, Hand.Cannot.Erase. The newer release carries a freshness and immediacy in stark contrast to Raven's lengthy, haunting proggy ghost stories, but not without hidden depths that only appear after the 99th listen.

The first of the two shows feels like an extended Hand.Cannot.Erase. tour concert: Wilson and band glide through the entire album (sans Transcience, sadly, preventing it from being a complete end-to-end run-though), being an extremely well-oiled and rehearsed machine by now. Despite having taken this set to numerous rapturously-received shows throughout the year, they attack the new material with pleasing, spirited zest.

While Hand... is a multifaceted, genre-skipping milestone unto itself on record, hearing it explored live is nothing short of a treat, Wilson and band employing quadraphonic sound to fill the Albert with it. 

The material traverses almost all of Wilson's musical palette: the uplifting prog-rock of 3 Years Older, the nimble pop of the album's title-track, the wistful slow climax of Perfect Life, the monstrous riff-labyrinth of Ancestral before finishing with Happy Returns, expertly treading the cheery/sad balance. Three select choices will survive into the second night, squaring off impressively against older cuts: now, however, Wilson's self-belief in his fantastic accomplishment shines through.


With Hand.Cannot.Erase. put to bed, the second set of the first night provides the assembled disciples with a grinning bag of jewels and gems, starting slowly and ominously with the first ever performance of material from Wilson's collaborotion with Opeth's Mikael Akerfeldt. Drag Ropes, a wonderfully spooky and foreboding piece (to call it a track or 'song' would be a misjustice), is laid out across the Hall over the course of approximately seven days. 

Its sheer length may have has a slight pulse-weakening effect on some, but the sheer rarity of the event cannot be underestimated, especially when Akerfeldt joins the band on stage to provide vocals and animator Jess Cope's fantastically disturbing video accompanies it on the giant screen.

Wilson next reminds all involved whose name is on the ticket as he leads the bands through their reworking of Index, complete with synchronised statue-posed finger-clicking introduction, a fantastically surreal sight through one of Wilson's brilliantly darkest pieces, with suitably eerie visuals presumably from long-term collaborator Lasse Hoile.

How is Your Life Today? and the invincible Lazarus follow, respectively a not unwelcome oddity and one of Wilson's absolute strongest compositions, rapturously received.

A short speech from Wilson prefaces a particularly tasty showcasing of unreleased HCE material, titled My Book of Regrets. Part proggy length and catchy verse, it is reminiscent of the dreamy sections of Luminol crossed with the singalong 'Tree track Blackest Eyes. It will arrive on an EP in January: begin the countdown.

Harmony Korine, The Watchmaker and Porcupine Tree's Sleep Together follow, the latter two with the expected white sheet hanging before the band, with appropriately disturbing visuals projected onto it for Watchmaker. It is nothing short of spellbinding, a masterfully executed matrimony of sound and sight.

By way of eventual encore, the 'Tree's The Sound of Muzak's sincere lamentations precedes The Raven That Refused To Sing, a perfectly judged conjuration of storytelling and emotional power.

The first night wrapped, all speculation turns towards the second: making sense of what has taken place, however, will take a long time. Wilson and band admirably stepped up to deliver something far more than a simple recital, matching expectations by putting on a spectacular event. 




Night 2:

With the first evening being an extended Hand.Cannot.Erase. tour show, the second is a rarities free-for-all. The band members consecutively take the stage to contribute to a steadily growing No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun. Wilson is the last to take the stage, to deserved cheers, leading it to its fantastically intense conclusion.

Fully assembled, the team tackle the first of several Porcupine Tree gems in the maudlin Shesmovedon, before returning to newer material in Routine. Guest vocals from Israeli singer Ninet Tayeb have been conspicuously absent from renditions of the song due to Tayeb's own inability to attend tour dates. For both of these nights, however, she is present to fill the Hall with the full force of her impressive larynx. Animator Jess Cope's heartbreaking stop-motion video accomapnies it as expected, and suddenly there is a demand for Wilson-themed handkerchiefs at the merchandise stand. 

A prog-rock stand-off ensues between Wilson's solo material versus more 'Tree tracks, to satiating results. "The only way to follow that is with some dumb heavy metal", quips Wilson in the aftermath of the emotional onslaught of Routine's unholy trinity of itself, Ninet's presence and Cope's aforementioned video. The 'metal' he speaks of comes in the form of Porcupine Tree's Open Car, with its itchy verses, gloriously epic chorus and the best guitar riff Matt Bellamy or Tom Morello never wrote. 

Don't Hate Me follows, before the two-part prog workout of Wilson's Home Invasion and Regret#9 - the former being a hydra-headed piece of volatile riffery, dreamy chorus and alt-rock swagger, the latter a truly fantastic showcase for the remarkable skills of keyboardist Adam Holzman and guitarist Guthrie Govan, who returns to the lineup tonight as a welcome guest, his recent absences ably covered by the superb Dave Kilminster (including these two nights). Govan and the band then revisit Wilson's wondrously fragile Drive Home, featuring Govan's jaw-dropping emotion-wringing extended solo.

Also re-joining for Drive Home is the humbly talented Theo Travis, providing woodwind instrumentation for a jog through more of Wilson's solo material: the crushing Sectarian, the dreamlike Insurgentes, No Part of Me, and finally a tastefully trimmed airing of sinister prog-demon Raider II. 

The first of two encores is a fascinating exploration of the first of three Porcupine Tree songs, the lengthy Dark Matter. Celebrated 'Tree sticksman Gavin Harrison receives some of the biggest cheers of the night, joining the band for a one-two of Lazarus and The Sound of Muzak.

For Steven Wilson, victory was secured long ago. With performances like this, he is reaching for something greater: immortality.