Absolute Dissent

The four men who made this record met again at the funeral of their long-serving bassist Paul Raven in October 2007 and decided to work as one band again. Jaz Coleman, Geordie Walker, Youth and Paul Ferguson had not recorded together since 1982, and Absolute Dissent is both that reunion and the first Killing Joke album after Raven's death. It was going to be called Feast of Fools. New songs came together between rehearsals in the summer of 2009, with Coleman and Walker bringing more material from Prague. Nine were ready when they started, another nine followed, and more than twenty were written in all. The band produced it themselves and Clive Goddard engineered and mixed; it was conceived and recorded across London, Spain and Prague. The sound keeps the sludgy weight of 2006's Hosannas from the Basements of Hell while putting the early post-punk frame clearly back underneath it. All four wrote the words, and from the title track through "European Super State" and "This World Hell" the anger is aimed outward and stated plainly. A two-disc deluxe edition adds a bonus disc called Absolute Respect, on which Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, Fear Factory and The Mad Capsule Markets, among others, cover Killing Joke songs.