Martin Atkins Resurrects A Post-Punk Beast As Killing Joke’s Extremities Roars Back To Life At Reggies For Two Nights

Dec 01, 2025 admin_bitlc Features, Music News, Reviews 0

By James Currie

On a record-shattering Chicago snow night, the kind where even the El seems to shrug and give up, Reggies somehow transformed into a volcanic blast furnace. Because for the first time in 35 years, Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions, Killing Joke’s most feral and defiantly misunderstood album, was heard live in its entirety. And who better to lead the charge than the man who helped shape it in 1990: drummer, Chicago legend, and industrial ringmaster Martin Atkins.

Before a single tom was struck or feedback howl let loose, former Killing Joke tour manager and self imposed Chicago music historian, Steve Silver, warmed up the crowd with stories only someone who survived the band’s orbit could tell. Equal parts absurd, affectionate and unapologetic. It set the tone perfectly for a night that was equal parts tribute, séance, and celebratory riot.

When Extremities first dropped, it was a jolt, even for longtime Killing Joke fans accustomed to the band’s unpredictability. Gone were the more atmospheric shifts of the mid ’80s. In their place, precision chaos, razor-sharp riffs and a rhythmic brutality that predicted the industrial metal boom by several years. Part of that shift came from behind the kit. With Martin Atkins replacing original drummer Paul Ferguson, the band suddenly sounded wired directly into a demolition site.

It was also a comeback album in every sense. Their previous record had tanked commercially, the band was dropped by their label, and, as Atkins has often said, everyone involved was fueled by a potent mix of frustration, conviction, and creative adrenaline. Touring with Ministry at the same time, Atkins brought with him the Chicago-style metallic grime that seeped into Extremities’ DNA. And in the middle of all this chaos, something unexpected happened, lifelong friendships formed. Atkins, Paul Raven, Geordie Walker, and Jaz Coleman grew into a tight, battle-tested clan. The era also drew in John Bechdel, who’d go on to become Ministry’s longtime keyboardist, and later helped inspire the sprawling, ever-mutating Chicago collective Pigface.

For this 2025 resurrection, Atkins assembled a supergroup tribute worthy of the post-punk legends. It was a supercell of talent for a supercell of a snow storm outside and included:

Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), unleashing vocals that balanced reverence with pure, serrated power
Mark Gemini Thwaite (Peter Murphy’s band), conjuring Geordie Walker’s ghost with a Gibson hollowbody that looked—and sounded—eerily close to the master’s own
Justin Pearson (The Locust), adding jagged, art-punk agitation
Tara Busch (I Speak Machine) and Nicola Kuperus (ADULT.), two electronic sorceresses capable of turning atmosphere into weaponry
Leyla I. Royale on cello, giving moments a haunted, neoclassical edge
Orville Kline, bending noise and electronics into the industrial backbone

And then, of course, the centerpiece: Atkins himself, pounding away on the very drums he used during the original Extremities era. Smashing that giant, chain hanging, iconic mirrorball on his right that he regularly punches away at throughout the set. Yeah, just look at his knuckles for proof.

Reggies was the perfect place for this to happen. The neighborhood was once a gravitational center for Chicago post-punk and industrial culture. H-Gun’s legendary video studios, numerous recording dens, and Atkins’ own Invisible Records label all orbited this patch of the South Loop. Playing Extremities there wasn’t just a show, it was a homecoming ritual.

Despite the blizzard outside, the venue was packed shoulder to shoulder with die-hards, musicians, and curious initiates ready to witness something that had lived only in rumor for decades.

They tore into Money Is Not Our God like it was a manifesto freshly written that morning, Blythe barking with militant precision. Age of Greed felt even more relevant in 2025 than it did in 1990, snarling with prophetic rage. The Beautiful Dead pulsed with atmospheric tension, Busch and Kuperus weaving synths that felt like haunted breath in a frozen room. Intravenous and Slipstream hit with a mechanical ferocity that would’ve made Ministry’s old road crew grin – yes, even ol Jolly Rodger.

(video of Intravenous from YouTube)

Atkins didn’t just keep time, he commanded it, accelerating, halting, and detonating rhythms with the same unpredictability that made the album iconic.

When the Extremities set concluded, the band ripped into a short, electrifying run of Killing Joke essentials: Wardance, Eighties, Love Like Blood, and a crushing, emotional Pandemonium that had half the room in ecstatic tears and the other half screaming along like their lungs were on fire.

Throughout the performance, there was an unspoken presence, two actually. Paul Raven and Geordie Walker, both gone too soon, both irreplaceable pillars of the band’s legacy. Atkins played with raw gratitude, the kind that can only come from someone who lived through the madness and the magic with them. The crowd felt it too. Every drum hit, every grinding riff, every howl of feedback carried the weight of remembrance.

In the end, the night felt less like a concert and more like a resurrection, a reclaiming of one of Killing Joke’s most powerful, least performed albums, brought to life by people who were part of its creation and those shaped by its mythology.

Even as the snow piled high outside, Reggies was burning, lit up by history, friendship, grief, fury and the joy of hearing Extremities roar again after 35 long years.