Artist · chart history
Killing Joke
Band London United Kingdom Formed 1979 UK punk/goth/industrial band
Killing Joke formed in 1979 in London, United Kingdom. Killing Joke has 62 chart appearances on 45 radio countdowns from 12 stations on RockLists, spanning 1980–2023. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Eighties”, which appears on 29 lists with a best position of #37. The station that charted Killing Joke most often is KROQ (Los Angeles, CA), with 11 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1984.
Killing Joke crawled out of Notting Hill in London in 1979 sounding like the end of the world had been booked for next Tuesday. Jaz Coleman sang and played keyboards, Geordie Walker played guitar, Youth played bass and Paul Ferguson hammered the drums, and from the self-titled debut in 1980, with "Requiem", they came on heavier and more menacing than anybody else in post-punk: tribal thud, a guitar that grinds like machinery, and Coleman bellowing over the top like a prophet with a grudge.
What's THIS For...! brought the stomp of "Follow the Leaders" in 1981, and Revelations, with "Empire Song", followed in 1982, after which Paul Raven replaced Youth on bass. Then came the surprise. Night Time in 1985 let some gothic gloom and pop gloss into the room and gave them their mainstream moment, with "Eighties", "Kings and Queens" and "Love Like Blood", a brooding, surging single that went top ten in Belgium, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
They kept changing shape, flirting with gothic rock, synth-pop and electronics, through Brighter Than a Thousand Suns and "Sanity" in 1986, Outside the Gate and "America" in 1988, and the crushing Pandemonium and "Millennium" in 1994, and the list of bands that took notes is long: Metallica, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden among them, with industrial rock as a whole in their debt. After Raven died in 2007, all four founders came back together the next year, and Coleman and Walker held the line until Walker's death in 2023.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Killing Joke on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eighties | 29 | #37 | – | 1984 | |
| 2 | Love Like Blood | 8 | #27 | – | – | |
| 3 | Requiem | 4 | #27 | – | – | |
| 4 | Change | 2 | #839 | – | – | |
| 5 | 80's | 1 | #104 | – | – | |
| 6 | Psyche | 3 | #34 | – | – | |
| 7 | Follow the Leaders | 2 | #28 | – | – | |
| 8 | America | 1 | #39 | – | 1988 | |
| 9 | Empire Song | 1 | #20 | – | 1982 | |
| 10 | Kings and Queens | 1 | #879 | – | – | |
| 11 | Millennium | 3 | #84 | – | 1994 | |
| 12 | Sanity | 2 | #60 | – | 1987 | |
| 13 | Let's All Go (To the Fire Dances) | 1 | #1483 | – | – | |
| 14 | Follow the Leader | 1 | #79 | – | 1981 | |
| 15 | Pandemonium | 1 | #756 | – | – | |
| 16 | Seeing Red | 1 | #83 | – | 2003 | |
| 17 | King & Queens | 1 | #1762 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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