“I liked the sound of it, it looked rather serious, fanatical, I don’t know what it was but it clicked with me, So I went down to see this guy [Coleman] and immediately started arguing with him about his taste in music and whatever, and I kept in touch and kept hassling them for some reason. I think it was the intensity of the argument I liked.” said Walker during an 1984 interview.
Coleman has said Killing Joke’s early start was to “define the exquisite beauty of the atomic age in terms of style, sound and form.” The band played its first show in August 1979 and cited contemporaries such as Adam Ant, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and Public Image Ltd. as early influences. Following an EP in 1979, the band released their debut self-titled album in 1980.
A prolific series of releases would follow throughout the 1980s, including 1981’s What’s This For…! and the Conny Plank–assisted 1982 album Revelations. During that period, Jaz Coleman fled to Reykjavík, Iceland, over concerns about the apocalypse. Walker and the band performed “Empire Song” on Top of the Pops with a roadie wearing a beekeeper outfit standing in for Coleman. Walker and Ferguson then decamped to Iceland to join Coleman.
The band followed up with 1983’s Fire Dances. Killing Joke’s 1985 album, Night Time, featured hit singles including “Love Like Blood” and “Eighties.” The band was dropped from Virgin Records following 1986’s Brighter Than a Thousand Suns and 1988’s Outside the Gate. In 1994 Killing Joke released one of their best-selling albums with Pandemonium, which arrived in the middle of industrial rock’s boom. That same year they released Democracy. Their self-titled 2003 album was produced by Gang of Four’s Andy Gill and featured Dave Grohl on drums. The band followed it with multiple albums across the 2000s and 2010s.
Walker’s impact as a guitarist is incalculable, with Killing Joke looming as an influence for so many artists across the spectrum of heavy music. Kevin Shields and Jimmy Page are outspoken fans and it has been claimed that Nirvana borrowed the melody of “Come as You Are” from the song “Eighties.” In addition to his work with Killing Joke, Walker was in the bands Murder, Inc. and the Damage Manual.
