Music review: Killing Joe

To this day, Killing Joke are still the only band to ever really scare me with a performance. Thirty years into their career, they remain a fierce, potent proposition, playing with an almost intimidating intensity to outstrip any of their peers and most of their punk/metal progeny.

Following the untimely death of bassist Paul Raven, they have come full circle with their line-up, reforming the original gang of renegades: bruiser drummer Big Paul Ferguson, Loki-like frontman Jaz Coleman – by day a respected classical composer/arranger, by night a demonic shaman – and, flanking him, the unflappable six-string alchemist Geordie and bassist/world renowned producer Youth. He's the balding, grey-haired guy in the golf visor, by the way.

Together, they generated a piledriving force and inexorable momentum which was by turns thrilling and exhausting.

The majority of this set was plain brute force, with much of the subtlety of Geordie's distinctive guitar sound lost in the totalitarian assault.

These guys could whip up a mob so easily with declamatory calls-to-arms such as Wardance and the monolithic majesty of Requiem, not to mention Coleman's brief sermons on the economic apocalypse and other philosophical matters rarely addressed by a rock band.

But they could equally incite the none-too-sprightly audience to dance with the underlying funkiness of Love Like Blood and the pagan stomp of Eighties.

Long may they light fires and rage hard.