Although musically I'm a semi-avowed Anglophobe, outside of a few exceptions (Buzzcocks and Judas Priest, mostly), this 45 found its way into my collection back when I was a puny little punk-rocker type, mainly because Killing Joke were always being mentioned as an influence by a lot of the Minneapolis/Chicago bands that I was really into at the time-- Big Black, Naked Raygun, Rifle Sport, Breaking Circus, and so forth. Either that, or the record store was all sold out of their copies of "Too Drunk To Fuck", and I needed something else to spend my two dollars on. Anyway, I quickly found out that this was an awesome single, although I never bought another Killing Joke record again-- I must've figured once was enough, history lesson's over.
If you've never heard Killing Joke, or if you're only familiar with their later-period MTV "120 Minutes" crap (like "Eighties"), which is all horrible, you'll probably be suprised at how metallic their earliest stuff is. "Requiem", in particular, has the crunchiest guitar sound this side of a Negative Approach soundboard tape. Personally, I've never been able to decide upon which of these two songs I like better; every time I plop this record down onto a turntable, I'm like, "Hey, this is cool-- can't beat that!", and then I flip the record over and go, "Hey, this side's pretty cool also!"
I also really like how a lot of the British new-wave singles I've seen have the record label information stamped right into the vinyl, instead of using a paper label. I'm guessing this is because the Germans took all of England's paper supplies during the war, and they've never given any of it back.
All dumb jokes aside, I think this sounds pretty damn good for near-30-year-old vinyl.
"Requiem"
"Change"
(these files are now listen-only)
