The list of bands that owe KILLING JOKE credit, acclaim and some sort of royalties as monetary compensation in return for the influence is long and distinguished, as this English institution has brought the noise and flexed heads with panache, aplomb and disillusioned doom since its self-titled debut in 1980. In 2012, Killing Joke is once again recording with the original lineup of Jaz Coleman, Youth, Geordie Walker and Paul Ferguson and the group has continued the latter-day revival that began with 2003's self-titled comeback effort and peaked with 2006's righteous exercise in uncivility, Hosannas From The Basements of Hell. MMXXI is a culmination of Killing Joke's innumerable stylistic shifts but the record, impressively, is probably the most focused and non-redundant of the band's career, Killing Joke executing songs that are clearly the product of 30 years of hard-won (and hard-fought) wisdom. Which is the same thing that can be said about the latest MOONSPELL, even if Killing Joke and Fernando's band have, literally, nothing in common except 20/20 hindsight that allows for the creation of records that are hungry and vital based on long careers that have come and gone with prices and consequences, invoking the scars and aged wrinkles on the face that allow for late-career resurgences that are becoming common, though no less impressive (see also: NAPALM DEATH). MMXXI is to be commended for its complicity in completeness, the album clearly based in its '80s post-punk raison d'etre but also filled with what record company people love terming "good songs", centred around the brilliantly affecting 'In Cythera' and the classic primal rage of 'Rapture' (the 2012 soulmate to '03's 'Asteroid'), two tracks that join 'You'll Never Get To Me' as Killing Joke's most effective material of the last ten years (and, add to that, the entirety of Hosannas From The Basements of Hell, of course). In its totality, MMXXI is a wise album that, while not forgetting the past, has benefited from both the laudable moments and the missteps and has taken those high times and low depths to heart in creating what is surely Killing Joke's most consistent album.