Night Time

Killing Joke | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 31, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: E.G. Records
• ASIN: B000003S1Q
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,598 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #35 in Music > Indie Music > Alternative Rock > New Wave

Track Listings

1. Night Time

2. Darkness Before Dawn

3. Love Like Blood

4. Kings and Queens

5. Tabazan

6. Multitudes

7. Europe

8. Eighties

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This album changed my life..., January 28, 2004

By 

Bighairydoofus "-" (Brooklyn Park, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Time (Audio CD)

Set the wayback machine to 20 years ago (yikes!), I was babysitting and my girlfriend and I were watching MTV (well, sort of). On comes this video, there's this incredible guitar, twangy, dark and sinister backed by this primal beat. On the screen it goes back and forth between this guy in a suit behind a podium singing, nay, preaching the lyrics of this incredible song. Behind him were the flags of the then Soviet Union and US. Then stock footage, then this guitarist playing a huge goldtop hollowbody. He wasn't playing it, he was caressing it, squeezing out this beautiful, angry and ominous sound.

I sat there transfixed, then ran around the house like a madman looking for a pen and paper to write down the name of the band and the album.

I searched all over and finally located an import pressing and paid dearly for it, but it was all I'd hoped for. This was Killing Joke, the voice of Jaz Coleman's muse. There were lyrics like none other I'd seen before. Songs about man as animal, sex, life in Europe waiting for the apocalypse (remember, this was '84), the emptiness of life in the 80's, and looking at the aforementioned apocalypse not as a bad thing, but the inevitable way to set things right and return man to his proper place as a tribal creature, not one of cities and civilizations.

I immediately set about getting Killing Joke's previous works. This band SPOKE to me. While I don't think this is their best, I do think it's probably one of the more accessible and definitely the title to buy for those that enjoy the music of the 80's.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hidden Jewel, February 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Night Time (Audio CD)

Geordie Walker is one of my favorite truly heavy guitar players. This was the first Killing Joke record I ever heard so I kinda missed out on the timeline when people associated them w/ the punk/ new wave thing. I heard this amazingly heavy atmospheric record that was also perfectly arranged. Perhaps I am projecting here a bit, but for me, Killing Joke has alway ruled the heavy, quasi-occult, intelligent realm of rock. Jaz Coleman's voice is one of the few I find believable singing about such themes. Like the characters in Lovecraft books who, through some tinkering w/ nature and old manuscripts, have glimpsed the other side of reality and left barely sane enough to talk, Coleman's voice delivers convincing tales from the darkside. I am completely confused by the common classification of this record as some "accessible" offering that was intended for the charts and succeeded w/ "Eighties" which you can now find on your favorite "Hit's of the EIGHTIES" compilation. This is easily the hidden jewel in my top ten RECORDS of the decade. Night Time is a perfectly composed masterpiece that was a decade ahead of it's time at least. Fans of current "thinking/heavy/industrial" stuff and who haven't heard of Killing Joke would be well served by listening to the album.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Killing Joke's commercial peak., April 6, 2005

By 

Michael Stack (North Chelmsford, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night Time (Audio CD)

In many ways, this is the direction Killing Joke had been heading for the past several albums, and in many ways, "Night Time" is by far the best album the band did with Paul Raven anchoring on bass, but I've never found "Night Time" quite as compelling as others.

"Night Time" is largely a pop/new wave album-- Geordie's guitar, having taken on a metallic edge in the past couple albums, gets a sheen to it this time around, Paul Ferguson's drumming has yielded its tribal rhythms in favor of dance beats, and Jaz Coleman's shouts and rasps are all but gone, instead he uses his smoother singing style he'd been honing over the past couple albums. Lyrically, the band seems to have left behind the armageddon predictions of the early records and instead is making a sort of abstact statement about degraded society. It actually works quite well from this standpoint.

Truthfully, when it works, it works quite well-- "Love Like Blood" is brilliant, haunting, dark, funky, and bar none one of the best songs the band ever recorded, ditto in feel for "Darkness Before Dawn", though its not nearly as good a song, it sets up a great mode with Coleman's frightened vocal over synth delivery of the verses and Raven's crisp bass sound, "Kings and Queens" is an aggressive number that FEELS like an old KJ song, even if its wrapped in the band's new sound, and "Eighties" may be dancey pop music, but bar none, its great dancey pop music, the band chugs and Coleman wails and its just a blast. Mind you, there's also the totally lame title track, with its goofy chorus and a couple largely forgettable tracks ("Europe" in particular, which even though I've listened to this album hundreds of times, I can't think of how it goes....).

Killing Joke never really stood still but evolved over time, and this one is certainly no exception. Its the peak of the band's more viable sound, and its a great album, but be careful-- if you're familiar with the old stuff (or the new stuff now that I think about it), this can be quite unexpected, but taken as it is, its a great record.