'Night Time' by Killing Joke is a surprisingly surprising LP. Perhaps closer in heart to their long ago first album – in terms of rhythm, vitality and feeling of being drawn through an emotional mincing machine to emerge scarred, scathed but maybe wiser – than its more immediate kin, 'Fire Dances'.

Paul: "The album does have a lot in common with the first album. It's less 'experimental', got more melody and emotion and variety in it. It's a superior album in our estimation, never mind anybody else's. It's the first album where we felt musically competent as if everything was in control and we just did it the way we wanted instead of the odd occasion where things would get a bit hazy – sort it out in the mix, so to speak. Lyrically it's far more coherent as well.

"As always we all work on the lyrics but this time there is more direction in what we were actually wanting to write about than there has been in the. past. The subject matter was pretty much the same. It's as broad or as narrow minded as you like to take it. Jaz and myself were getting pretty much into Meshima at the time so there's a lot of S&M in there. There's still stuff about fanaticism, the coming race – the usual stuff you expect from Killing Joke!"

Geordie: "It's a bit more down home this time. You can see our point of view a lot more clearly."

Paul: "I think people can relate to the lyrics better than they have been able to. It's actually a bit more humane I think ... in its fascism."

Ah, yea. For many non-combatant standoffs Killing Joke are a mystery who have come to embody lurking evil, vile menace and a liking for good ole gas chambers.

Paul: "I don't know if that's our fault. I don't think so but ... you've been on tour with us you know we're not...'

Geordie: "... that horrid."

Paul: "That horrid, we're not that nihilistic. We do actually consider a bright future and just because we think what we exist in at the moment is pretty bleak it doesn't mean we've got a completely negative attitude."

Geordie: "What it is, is that I find most journalists are a sort of cross between frustrated musicians and frustrated psychologists. They like to get on well with a band and describe a band in a way that makes it look like they have a complete comprehension of it and then offer their own creativity to it. They've never been able to do that with us so they just insult us and try and label us fascist as they have done for the last five years.

"It's because we used to smoke a lot and we are quite mischievous characters, we used to bait them and get them completely off their trees. As off as we were but they weren't used to it. And then we'd just go for it, like complete character assassinations just for our own amusement because we could never take it seriously. It appeared to us to be funny but to them, I don't think they could quite handle it. They retaliated by writing all sorts of shit. That's their problem, we're still here."

But you contributed to the, shall we say, misunderstanding?

Geordie: "Just out of mischief, it was harmless. There was no bad intent but they probably didn't see it like that."

Paul: "We wuz just having a giggle."

Geordie: "A giggle, maybe at their expense. There was no malicious intent ... Honest!"

And a sensationalism emerged.

Paul: "No. I mean the incident yesterday with the boardroom table (apparently they managed to squash the piece of E.G. furniture – value £3,000) ... things like that just tend to happen."

JOKING APART: In the summer of 1983 I was commissioned to write a Killing Joke biog for their record company. This was my first 'involvement'. Life suddenly became eventful, a string of strange coincidences and genuinely odd occurrences ... Have I ever looked back?

A funny thing happened to me on my way... (laughter round the table)

Geordie: "Try explaining that to people." I have. I can't.

Paul: "Things just happen to us. We're bad karma basically, to each other. We enjoy the torment. We enjoy the complete chaos."

Geordie: "I can't imagine anything worse than working intensely with a group of people who are congratulating and stroking each other off all the time."

Paul: "The last thing that we do is each congratulate each other. Which is a bit of a shame sometimes. Something that's done well gets completely ignored and some real foul up lasts for a long time."

In an effort to jolt the subjective reaction to their name, Killing Joke sent out review copies of the 'Love Like Blood' single with no name or title. Probably this had little affect on the (un)consciousness of the media cheeses who doubtless found out before committing themselves. In their noddles it maybe furthered the notion that Killing Joke are 'difficult'.

Paul: "It was just an idea to make people open to what they were listening to and maybe they could listen without prejudice. It might not work but you've got to try these things haven't you."

Geordie: "I'd like to see, when we're at the stage where we're selling their papers, whether these journalists will stand up to their commitments, if they've always hated us, and leave the paper if they're sent to review us. That would really interest me and you know who I'm talking about don't you. They're always the first to come at you if they think you've compromised your ferocity to sell records but they're in exactly the same situation. I wonder if they'll stick to their guns as we have."

Paul: "People who've always hated you will start to join in when you become hip and fashionable. It's like hippies when the Pistols were playing around – 'well, I really hate this band' and then the fashion catches on and they cut their hair off and join in.

Raven: "Now they've all got black drainpipes, white sneakers and work for record companies."

Paul: "We're compromising ourselves all the time, always have done, always will do. We're called Killing Joke, we're entitled to."

Raven: "But no one else is." (laughter round the table)

It is still a shock that in this day and age that Killing Joke, without notable chart placings, can sell out major venues – with ease.

Paul: "Success is relative. I think we're very successful in that we can exist without being in the Top Ten or even Top Thirty. And we've really tried on occasions to compromise our music but we knew it didn't work so we don't even consider that now. We just play exactly what we like and can afford to. And that really is success, being able to do what you want to do.

"As for commercial success and the public eye – I've always found that difficult to envisage with a band called Killing Joke. I'd actually like to sell a lot of records as I'd like a lot of people to appreciate the music for what it is. But that doesn't mean there's any necessity for fame. The fortune everybody's into but the fame ..."

Who needs it? The weak egos? (See The Weak Ego's colour spread in next week's Smashed Mirror Record Hits.)

The 'Eighties' video has been on rotation longer than any other in MTV in the States. And it has been voted number 7 in a network top ten alongside Michael Jackson et al. All this despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it doesn't set each member of the group as a little actor in their own little film. Instead it bombards the viewer with clips of news broadcasts from the 'real' world.

Paul: "We put in the usual sort of stuff that gets banned in promo videos. We do things that startle people into some kind of, not necessarily action but some emotion. We want to avoid the syndrome where bands see themselves as movie stars and hope to be offered a part in a major film like Sting or Paul McCartney."

But it is what pop music has become. From bedroom to boardroom and back again with no 'rebellion' stage inbetween. Are the 'stars' (bless 'em) to blame when the rewards (monetary) are there?

Paul: "But they are responsible for what it has become, they can't blame anyone else. If you're fool enough to present yourself as a faggot because it's hip at the time ... that's what's in you, it's not what's expected by anyone else. The rewards are there if you don't do that as well. The rewards in this life are what you want and what you take out of life. They're not for pandering to other people's taste. You can perpetuate the madness or you can go against it and do what you think is right whether that's mad or not. Geddit?"

Got it.

Do you like other groups?

Paul: "Other music. We're not narrow minded in what we listen to and we listen to a broad selection of music from classical through to Country & Western – Hank Williams, of course Jaz hated it but ... We are actually very receptive to what's around us. We might slag most of it off but that's anyone's perogative."

This "bright future", it means ... ?

Geordie: "Getting all the rubbish out of the way."

Paul: "Everybody's bright future is for them to decide. We look towards a time that might not actually be in our lifetime but ... we still do believe in the concept of the superman or super race or whatever. That is a bright future, a future when you're not constantly struggling against the majority of people who're trying to drag you down.

"Where you have an idea and that idea can't thrive and blossom. It's just a change from now, from this environment, from this turmoil that especially this country is going through at the moment. Total economic decline where the mentality seems to be going in a downward spiral.

"The brave new world if you like is the opportunity of some climbing toward a common goal that is the advancement of humanity. We think about things like this, it's not necessarily what the music is about."

Geordie: "But it's what gets our dander up!"

Paul: "We see ourselves as a bright future. We see our music as hope. We get a lot of emotion and a lot of enthusiasm out of our music. No way is it nihilistic – we're not preaching the end of the world. Our music is like the primal instinct that gives life."

Geordie: "I feel that the emotion and frame of mind that our music creates is the necessary level of emotion to see through the next few years. Carrying a level of emotion that some people find threatening but which we see as necessary to continue in the present climate."

Paul: "We'd like our music to be popular because we'd like people to glean from the music the vitality that we feel for it and to put that into their own lives. We may be totally misguided but that doesn't matter because we appreciate fanaticism whether misguided or not. It is pure, not walking around in circles.

"We hope people can listen to our music and find in themselves some real purpose because that's all that matters, ultimately to anyone. And I'd like people not to think that we're preaching at them – says he as we preach – we're not preaching, our music is really there to be listened to.

"Unfortunately with interviews it always finished up as us spouting long monologues about what we think about life, which is pretty tedious. I never read interviews with musicians because I don't give a toss what they say basically. It's really boring to hear a musician talk about his principles of life – despite the fact that I'm doing it. It seems to be demanded by journalists because they want to talk about your motivation. Really our motivation is ..."

Geordie: "Selfish."

Paul: "Selfish. It's what we like to hear. If we liked anything else we'd be doing something else. In interviews you sometimes find you're talking a complete load of cack because it's the first thing comes into your mouth."

Raven: "Like gas chambers and stuff."

Paul: "I suppose it's pretty Freudian. People like us, we psycho-analyse ourselves all the time. Well me and Jaz do and don't know about the other two."

Geordie: "I find thought is very distractive to me personally. I prefer not to think and just jump in with both feet and see what happens. See what breaks and see what still stands. I think we're still brats."

JOKING APART: In the summer of 1983 the Killing Joke touring vehicle is en route from Glasgow to Durham, travelling through an area of many rivers and streams. The vehicle halts and sophisticated fishing rods are unloaded from the rear. Geordie casts off and eventually catches a minnow. Photos are banned and the incident, much like the events behind the sinking of the Belgrano, is hushed up.