Killing Joke front man Jaz Coleman has cast such a ferocious shadow across metal, postpunk, goth, industrial, dance, and more that the shape of contemporary music would be incalculably different if he and the band had never written a song. As Steve Taylor wrote in the 2006 book The A to X of Alternative Music, Killing Joke have inspired “all dark music since 1981.”

In addition to his career with Killing Joke, he’s also recorded some of the world’s most masterful traditional musicians, and as a self-taught classical composer he’s worked with many great orchestras, including the London Philharmonic and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. A lifelong student of the esoteric, he’s pursued his quest for knowledge all over the globe: on that trip to Iceland in the early 80s, he immersed himself in the Jungian process of individuation (though he allowed a story to spread that he was fleeing an impending apocalypse), and for decades on and off he lived on a remote New Zealand island, where he communed with nature and led a church choir. He’s also spent time at famous sacred and mystical sites, including the Nazca Lines in Peru and the Great Pyramid of Giza—where he and the band recorded vocals for three tracks on Killing Joke’s 1994 album, Pandemonium, in the king’s chamber.

Killing Joke have inspired countless big-name artists—including Tool, obviously, and also the likes of Metallica, Moby, Faith No More, Jimmy Page, and Nirvana (who notoriously copped the riff from KJ’s antiestablishment rager “Eighties” for “Come as You Are”). Their influence reached Chicago too—after discovering KJ as a teenager, Steve Albini went on to adapt the stripped-down quality of their early releases to his own music and recording aesthetic. Chicagoan Martin Atkins drummed with Killing Joke for three years beginning in the late 80s, and the lineups of Murder Inc. and Pigface have included Atkins, Chris Connelly, and various KJ members. Longtime Killing Joke bassist Paul Raven did a stint in Ministry before his untimely death in 2007.

  • The Magna Invocatio version of “The Raven King”

Coleman’s collaboration with brain-obliterating Brazilian hard-psych trio Deafkids is due in 2020, and later this month listeners can experience the music of Killing Joke in an entirely new format. On November 29, Coleman will release Magna Invocatio: A Gnostic Mass for Choir and Orchestra Inspired by the Sublime Music of Killing Joke (Spinefarm), recorded in Russia with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic (he’d originally planned to collaborate with a somewhat less rarefied group, the Saint Petersburg Symphony). He describes it as “the most important work of my career.”

We probably would be better off if the powers that be were willing to learn a thing or two from Jaz Coleman. But even if this music doesn’t reach any statehouses, it’s moving and beautiful, and highlights the immersive, soul-reaching potential of Killing Joke. The 13 tracks on Magna Invocatio alternate between choral pieces that exude restorative, life-affirming messages and renderings of Killing Joke songs from the band’s past couple decades, including an emotional take on the Paul Raven tribute “The Raven King” and an ecstatic version of the Pylon track “Euphoria.”