"We are at the beginning of World War Three!" grins Jaz Coleman as his opening gambit tonight before Killing Joke have played a note of music. Later on, he'll raise his eyebrows and warn that come winter "the shop shelves will be empty", and buzzkill everyone excited by the announcements of next year's line-up that, "This time next year we'll all be radioactive waste."
Banter.
There are some in attendance who find Killing Joke's addition to the bill jarring. But Jaz Coleman was wearing make-up onstage long before Dark Funeral or Behemoth (and to much more genuinely unsettling effect), while stories of the band's occult activities would make Dimmu Borgir's hair curl. And anyway, in the wings stage right, Randy Blythe spends the whole set taking photos and enthusiastically bobbing his head to Pandemonium, a prescient Wardance, an aggressive rendition of The Wait and the frankly transcendent The Death And Resurrection Show. The endearing lack of slickness as they tune between songs is the negative of the mania within the manic I Am The Virus and bullish Loose Cannon, with Jaz looking like his eyes might pop out of his head at any moment.
"Take drugs! Take drugs!" he mantras at one point. God knows what Killing Joke's wild ceremony must look like to anyone who's on one, but even without playing Love Like Blood, Killing Joke still perform like they're last band to play at the end of the world. (NR)