Killing Joke – Pandemonium (1994)

December 3, 2023

Make no mistake here, Pandemonium is a punishing listen. Doubling down on the rejuvinated sound of Extremities…, Killing Joke fall further into the world of industrial metal. Their sound is always unmistakably theirs, wherever they take it, but the industrial influences are hard to ignore. Geordie’s riffs are still dissonant, angular and strange, but there’s a repetitive chug to them in leui of the abstract post-punk approach on older records.

Pandemonium finds a band which sounds a million miles away from Outside The Gate or …Thousand Suns. Yet, with the absense of a perma-drummer, the line up is only changed here by the prescence of Youth on bass. “Communion” sounds like “Invocation” from Hosannahs but from a forgotten age, and “Whiteout” is a contender for the best song on the album, for sure.