Love Like Blood - Killing Joke

The three elements crucial to a great rock song, in my opinion, are: hooky chord changes, a beat, and atmosphere (achievable in a number of ways but usually through the use of keyboards and/or guitars). Love Like Blood, by Killing Joke, has all of three of these in spades. A solid, danceable midtempo beat throughout, played by a real drummer ("Big Paul" Ferguson) with a lot of adrenaline, riveted exactly with precise bass and distorted rhythm guitar. The intro builds the perfect atmosphere, a simple guitar arpeggio and the two distant keyboard chords, and the beat comes flailing two measures in. A simple but spooky one chord bridge (sounding a little Dr. Who esque even), then the chorus descends through some major chords, all very tightly leading back to the intro/verse.

The lyrics are here. Frankly they don't matter to the impact of the music, but they do shed a little light on the sort of live action socialist realism clips in the video (click on song link above) "We must dream of promised lands and fields. That never fade in season. As we move towards no end we learn to die. Red tears are shed on grey." Looks to be a critique of the Cold War Soviet something or other. I don't know too much about this band, other than that they received a lot of college radio airplay in the 80s (probably their biggest stateside hit was Eighties, an obvious commentary on late Cold War politics). Their Wikipedia entry describes them as one of the most influential post-punk bands (a pretty large and nebulous genre). At least from the two songs I mention here, they certainly compress the hard edges of punk into organized pop song structures that drive pretty hard. Definitely worth pursuing a deeper understanding of this band.

One interesting, if a little annoying, thing about the studio version of Love Like Blood is an apparent production glitch in the extended instrumental part toward the end of the song (I think the Youtube video linked above cuts out before this). Either extra beats are thrown in or a fragment of a measure is deleted. I don't know why the song was left this way but someone has probably written about it somewhere...