English post-punk legends Killing Joke have released the Lord of Chaos EP, their first new material released by the band in 7 years, and as the latest guest on Full Metal Jackie's weekend radio program, lead singer Jaz Coleman had a lot to say about the direction he feels the world is going in and how it relates to the Killing Joke's music.
He voiced particular distaste for the powers that be.
"These people are scumbags, they are enemies of the human race. It gives me great pride to say that and I hope they are listening," said Coleman. "These billionaires that live on your West Coast, what are they doing for the hungry and the poor of this world? The way they’ve got it planned, they’re looking at these people as e-workers. That’s what they call them. The elite of our planet proposing slavery again."
Read the full interview below. [Disclaimer: We would like to strongly stress that the information here is not to be regarded as fact and does not represent the views of Loudwire. We encourage you to do your own research and decide for yourself.]
On the show this week we’ve got Killing Joke vocalist Jaz Coleman. How are you?
I’m completely [expletive]! Like one would be at this point in a tour. At this point in a tour one is suffering from exhaustion, it's a normal state. It’s kind of an addictive thing. It’s always been like this, and I keep coming back for more over and over again. It’s that kind of total exhaustion thing, living in a tour bus, I love the bunking life, I love the pirate life, I love it all, what can I say? I’m tired, but it’s kind of a good tired.
We’re excited for this new EP Lord of Chaos. It’s the first new material from the band in 7 years. Lord of Chaos is an appraisal of humanity creeping toward the abyss. What responsibility do artists have to warn society about itself?
There are many things that I know I wouldn’t share with the wider public and even my children because I don’t think it would do anyone any good. As you can see, my role in music has been — pretty much since 1979 — drawing people’s attention to the great changes that are happening now. I’ve been doing this since [indecipherable] as you know. Let’s cut to the chase here, every great cycle — and I call a cycle every 12,800 years or so — there’s massive changes on the planet.
When you think of our solar system, you have to think of it on a cyclic path because it’s got its own orbits. We’re just about to go through our winter season, you could say. We’re going through the torrid belt and as President Obama pointed out, things are going to get a little bumpy with space weather. This is what lies ahead of us and you can see all these massive changes that are happening around our civilizations. You have to think of it as an ant colony or termite mound to understand this process of centralization. We need this in order to survive what’s coming.
Keep in mind we’ve survived previous ice ages and comets and meteors hitting the planet and we’re about to go through this rollercoaster ride together. I draw attention to this so that we can share the experience we all are born at the end of an age, at the end of a great cycle. There’s great meaning in this, why we are all born at this time. What I’ve loved about this tour is the sense of unity within the band. We’re forced to look after each other. We don’t always like each other but we do love each other very much.
Jaz, talk about your fans — they’re such die-hards — and what you think Killing Joke’s role is with the fans.
With what you call the fanclub and what we call the gathering. On this tour we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people coming to us and they’re dying. They’re dying of cancer or this or that and so many people have pasts and so many people are in pain. The role of Killing Joke is to lift people’s spirits up and to draw people together. The wonderful thing about Killing Joke’s shows is that we all have so much in common. We’re like a brotherhood and a sisterhood, we’re not like any normal band. We have one big global family. It’s more than a network, it's our life.
I remember back in 1982 talking with Geordie [Walker] when I was in Iceland and we made a decision to start the gathering, which is the idea that it can be so much more than a fanclub. It has so much more meaning to be a gatherer and to be a part of this Killing Joke family. Especially at this time, we’ve encouraged, over the last 42 years, Earth communities to get together and to start thinking about food supply, and the art centers of tomorrow will be farms. Unless we can put food in our stomachs, we can’t even dream trancendentalism or the arts for that matter.
There’s going to be a lot of hungry people. Look, you have the World Economic Forum telling us that in the next couple of years, we’re going to move into a cashless society. The last couple of years, I’ve been living in Mexico. Around me was 12.5 million homeless people. So my question to the World Economic Forum is: When you go into your cashless society, what will these people live on? How will they feed themselves? This is why I have very little time for these ghastly selfish people. To put it mildly, if you really knew what I was thinking, technology has gone on this exponential curve upward so there are these microsensors in my body that tell the powers that be what I would do to them if I had my way.
These people are scumbags, they are enemies of the human race. It gives me great pride to say that, and I hope they are listening. These billionaires that live on your West Coast, what are they doing for the hungry and the poor of this world? The way they’ve got it planned, they’re looking at these people as e-workers. That’s what they call them. The elite of our planet proposing slavery again. Supposedly slavery ended six years before I was born in 1960 right? Now, these people are going to re-introduce slavery, a digital slavery, a panopticon if you’d like, so I feel very strongly about it.
I’m at the end of my life and I don’t really give a flying fuck what the Gates of the world and the Bonos and these ghastly, greedy people, I hope they are listening now. I’ve written a thesis and it’s called A Pendulum Theory and it goes like this: We’ve gone so far into facsism now, and let’s remind everybody Mussolini said “corpratism is facism.” Mussolini said this, and you have the Council on Foreign Relations and the Oral Institute of International Affairs and all these lovely sounding clubs. These are the steering committees for corpratism and that’s what we’ve got now chartering the direction of the human race into trans-humanism. If you think 13 year olds having 40 different gender choices is just normal and healthy, I don’t. Anything else you’d like to know?
Jaz, bands experience personnel changes but its less common that an original lineup comes back together. What makes you, Paul [Ferguson], Geordie [Walker], and Youth so compatible both personally and artistically?
I don’t think we’ve ever been compatible what are you talking about? The thing is, we clash gloriously. With strong personalities we smash against each other like planets and that’s the only way I can describe it. As for our longevity, it is because we are meant to be here now, to hold the hands of so many people as we’re going through these great changes. We’re meant to be here, we were born for this, the band was born for this. We did a magical ritual when we were young, when I was a teenager, and we found the other two members of the band and we’re all still together and we want people to think about how we need global revolution for this world that they’re making.
They’re making hell on Earth. These people that are planning out the direction of the human race. I keep going back to the World Economic Forum and I keep going back to Davos because these are the scumbag enemies of the human race. They’re really bad people, and they need to be neutralized. Neutralized and deleted. You can take that as you will. I think they’re bad, I do. What else would like to know? They have plans for this massive global surveillance state and plans to change our DNA so we turn into a different species well, so be it.
I’ve got something to tell you all that you won’t like: A cataclysm is coming that will wipe them all out. A cataclysm so vast you can’t even imagine it, and it’s about time, too. To wipe away all the evil from this world, oh I believe this, yes. It’s coming and you won’t have to wait long. They know it’s coming and around 2030 probably. Eight years we’ve got until everything changes, so before civilization as we know it will be gone. We are a doom cult and we are revolutionary. If there’s going to be any survivors it won’t be those scumbags who are going to crawl underground into their nuclear fallout shelters. We’ll pour concrete over their entrances.
Killing Joke are antithetical in the fact that the band is deadly serious yet can have some fun. Jaz, what’s challenging about making music that’s both edgy and recreational?
Well, I’m a blessed man as far as my brothers whom I started the band with when was 18, so it’s always a lot of fun to be with these people. The thing about the band is that they’ve got a very dark sense of humor, and when things get really bad thye find it really funny. It is funny because human beings are tragic.
Last year Jaz, you sustained a life-threatening injury. How has mortality reshaped your life perspective and artistic ideals?
It’s has a profound effect on me. What I’ll do as soon as I’m done with this tour is I’ll go back to the United Kingdom and go up and down this country and talk to all of the people who are really suffering and dying and see what I can do to help. That’s what I’m going to do. That’s what I’m going to do with my life. I’m going to charity, and I want to work with the poorest people on the planet. I have dreams of reforesting my country, which is of course New Zealand. I do not see it as property of the western allies or the corporate world.
They do not own this beautiful land. The ancestors own it. The tangata whenua of New Zealand owns it, not these corporate scumbags. I believe New Zealand will lead the way and show the rest of the world how to live properly. Cleaning the water, cleaning the food, this is the way forward. In our world today, we have different people, we have people in the Biotech industry and their dreams aren’t to have silent forests, their dreams are to be the neopromehtians and the gods creating new speicies. The fact is they’re really ugly people. They’re trying to replace the role of the supreme one, the mighty one over all!
We only have eight years left before massive change. When Sir Mortimer Wheeler excavated Mohenjo-daro, which is in northern Pakistan, they found traces of all of the human beings that died because of some fire from the sky. What was really profound about this was that they were all linking hands in a human chain around the city. If you think for one second that Plato said “All knowledge is remembering” I would take it one step further. I would say that every one of us has the genetic memory of every event that has happened in history.
So, those people who linked arms when the end was coming, we were them. That was our humanity. At some point when the end comes, someone must give the command to form a chain and we shall link hands so when they find us, they will remember lost humanity. You can move into the trans-human world, you can download consciousness, but you cannot download emotion, you cannot download compassion and empathy. If you think about that word "humanity," it is what defines us. It's our empathy that defines us, the very best of us.
What’s going on on our planet makes me extremely sad and extremely angry because these people who gather in Davos openly talk about reintroducing slavery and openly talk about e-workers. London School of Economics says that there will be two different species in the future, one that will have access to life extension programs and the downloading of IQs of 600 and they call this “Humanity Plus.” The second will be the e-workers, the poor and the sick and the needy and that’s you. That’s what they’re calling you already they’re calling you e-workers. These people think that they are shaping tomorrow but I’ve got news for them. They are going to shape nothing. Mother Earth is going to shape what’s coming next. They think they are all powerful these people, but they’re not.
Metallica, Janes Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, they all regard Killing Joke as an influence. What’s fufilling about rousing so much important music.
I’ll be honest with you, I really hate fame. I’m from a tradition where I after a show I like to walk out and shake hands with everyone outside the concert. I don’t really know what to say — I hate the whole rockstar ethos, I’m a punk really. I still believe in those principles and I don’t really have time for people who think they are better than anyone else. I certainly don’t think that I am better than anybody else. I do believe very strongly in Ghandi’s maxim that all men are equal. When you look at the disparity between the rich and the poor, it is beyond obscene.
How can so few own so much? It’s wrong and the people that sustain this must be stopped by any means necessary. I’m willing to die. I don’t believe in suicide but everyday I prepare myself to meet my end and to rejoin my ancestors. Everyday I am ready for this and I will never stop speaking out against facsim because nobody else will. Everybody just shuts up these days because it’s probably smart to. Maybe I’ve got a deathwish or something. My father fought in the last World War, and he brought me up and hardwired me against fascism. He took me around all the concentration camps when I was a little boy and he said “this happened because good people kept quiet.”
When you take a look at your own country I believe it was President Obama who signed the order for the internment and re-settlement camps for which there’s over a thousand across America. He signed that into order so what’s the difference between that and the Nazi’s? Because when all of this shit starts happening, “space weather” in Obama’s words, starts happening do you know where they’re going to start putting people they don’t like? They’re going to put them in those nice, new, clean FEMA camps. What do you think about that? I think it sucks. You all do nothing. You just watch them do it and you think that’s okay? Do something, wake up!
When I was in Mexico, I met an experimental pilot and he told me that they are resetting GPS every 10 days now because the pole is already moving. I don't like any of the major powers. I don’t like America, I don’t like China, I don’t like Russia. I don’t like any of them. I wanted a strong Europe. The point being is that the major powers are making land grabs and resource grabs before the poles shift. So don’t be surprised when China moves into Taiwan. We’re right on the edge now, and no band in the world has meaning like Killing Joke because we’ve been consistent. We’ve been saying these things since we started.
Thank you to Jaz Coleman for the interview. get your copy of the Lord of Chaos EP here and follow Killing Joke on Twitter and Instagram. Find out where you can listen to Full Metal Jackie's weekend radio show here.
