Search - Killing Joke :: No Way Out But Forward Go

2 1/2 stars-- an unusual live album

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 04/19/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It's kind of hard to review this record. Recorded primarily during the "Night Time" tour on a festival stop, "No Way Out But Forward Go" finds Killing Joke in full flight, but there's something quite wrong with it.



Recorded off the soundboard, it's crisp, clean, and reasonably well balanced (Jaz Coleman's vocals are a bit up front), but... and this may be the tour moreso than the recording, it's a bit too clean, a bit too crip. Take a piece like "Requiem" off the band's first album. Rather than the sludging force that it was on the studio recording, it's crisp, with the instruments well really widely separated and sounds a bit too clean. Not helping this at all is it sounds like Jaz Coleman isn't quite up to snuff in the open air performance-- he sings out of tune mangling fine takes of "Empire Song" and "Love Like Blood".



Further, you get the impression that the band's energy got a bit diffused by the atmosphere, several pieces fall a bit flatter when you'd really like to see them pushed ("Tabazan").



All this aside, there's some decent moment-- "The Hum" is dark, trudging and powerful, "Kings and Queens" is downright explosive, and certainly "Pssyche" never seems to miss. But by and large, this is not a record for a casual fan."