Killing Joke guitarist Kevin Walker, known as “Geordie”, has died

Kevin Walker, better known as Geordie, was the influential guitarist for Killing Joke. He died at the age of 64.

The influence of Kevin Walker, known as Geordie, guitarist for Killing Joke, is vast: Metallica attempted to imitate his guitar growl on their cover of ” The Wait HAS” ; Kurt Cobain admitted to covering his riff on ” Eighties †for “ Come As You Are HAS” ; LCD Soundsystem synthesized his riff on ” Exchange ” and changed it to “ Losing My Edge HAS”. Other artists who praised Walker’s playing and Killing Joke included Jimmy Page, Trent Reznor, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, and all members of Faith No More. Yet Walker himself never became a household name before his death on Sunday at the age of 64, which Killing Joke announced on social media.

HAS” It is with extreme sadness that we confirm that at 6:30 a.m. on November 26, 2023 in Prague, legendary Killing Joke guitarist Kevin ‘Geordie’ Walker passed away after suffering of a brain attackindicates their message. He was surrounded by his family. We are devastated. Rest in peace my brother. HAS”

HAS” No man was cooler than Geordie, one of the best and most influential guitarists of all timethe band’s bassist, Martin “Youth” Glover, wrote in an Instagram post after the announcement of Walker’s death. He was like Lee Van Cleef meeting Terry Thomas via Noel Coward. Very charming, inscrutable and graceful, with a smooth, effortless touch (both on the guitar and making you feel welcome). That is, when he wasn’t tearing you apart with his razor-sharp verbal shrapnel. HAS”

Walker, who was born on December 18, 1958, earned his nickname “Geordie†due to the strong accent he acquired growing up in the northeast of England. He received his first guitar at the age of 15, for Christmas 1973. He met singer and keyboardist Jaz Coleman when they were both teenagers and quickly agreed on what they didn’t like about each other. HAS” I hated everything he listened to, he hated what I listened to, but we both loved fishing, so we talked about it for three hours “Walker said. Uncut in 2018. The two men formed Killing Joke, with Youth and drummer Paul Ferguson, in the late 1970s; Walker and Coleman would be the only two constant members of the group during its 40+ year career.

The guitarist, who played a hollowbody guitar like Scotty Moore, Elvis’s accompanist, rather than a solid body like most heavy rockers, had the gift of adapting his guitar to the mood of a song, making her groan and gasp on the band’s 1980 self-titled debut album, which contained ” The Wait » and « Requiem HAS”. The album set the tone for industrial metal to come with its wild, mechanical fusion of post-disco and post-punk rhythms. The song “ Wardance » from the album is so good that British radio DJ John Peel thought it was a more famous artist recording under a pseudonym, and this song, as well as « Follow the Leaders » from Killing Joke’s second album, is found in the disco charts in the United States.

Walker adopts a more gothic sounding guitar for the album night time of the group, which contains ” Eighties » and the group’s biggest pop hit, « Love Like Blood “, in 1985. In the 1990s, the band returned to a heavier sound that fit perfectly with the burgeoning pop period of industrial music with the albums Pandemonium And Democracy, in which Walker played riffs by muffling the strings of his guitar. Nirvana “paid back” the band in 2003 with another self-titled album on which Dave Grohl was on drums and backed Walker’s guitar lines on ” The Death & Resurrection Show » and « Loose Cannon HAS”.

Always productive, the group has released numerous EPs and ” dub versions » of his songs (which influenced the industrial metal band Godflesh) throughout his career. HAS” The only music we listened to without arguing was dub “Walker said. Uncut.

HAS” He was a virtuoso gunslinger, both with his music and with his wordswrote Youth in his tribute on Instagram. He understood that alchemy was the sinews of war and that this was where the magic and the soul were found… in the conflict. HAS”

The group released their fifteenth album, Pylonin 2015, and his most recent, the EP Lord of Chaos, last year. A single, “ Full Spectrum Dominance “, was released in March, showcasing the full spectrum of Walker’s playing: metallic riffs, gothic darkness and memorable melodic moments.

Outside of Killing Joke, Walker played in the industrial supergroup Murder, Inc. alongside Ferguson and Killing Joke bassist Paul Raven, as well as Chris Connelly. They released a self-titled album in 1992. He reunited with Connelly and other members of Murder, Inc. in 2000 to form the band Damage Manual, which oriented more toward pop punk on a few albums.

In 2013, Walker said it was the human touch that made Killing Joke’s music special. HAS” When we started making records, playing shows wasn’t that differenthe declared to Metal Assault. We rehearsed, we wrote the songs, we took microphones and we played them! And now, if you’re not careful, you might not even see the drummer and the writer of the record. It’s a bit of all that, copy and paste. It may seem impressive at first listen, but after several listens, you realize that human imperfections are missing. It’s the imperfection that makes it magical. HAS”