PAUL FERGUSON + FRED SCHRECK (LIGHT OF ETERNITY): INTO THE VOID

Before the untimely passing of Killing Joke’s founding guitarist, Geordie Walker, whose death shook the band and gatherers across the world to their core, original drummer Paul Ferguson began his next venture with new music project, Light of Eternity. Taking its DNA from his previous band, it combines his tribal drumming with expansive layers of dark, cosmological energy and dystopian lyrical commentary on the ever declining state of affairs. Founded with former bandmate Fred Schreck of Crush on vocals and guitarist Pauly Williams of Chaos 8, the band released three EPs and a studio album of tracks that conjure up the primordial darkness that Ferguson uses to question the point of our very existence. I caught up with Paul and Fred on tour before their London show to discuss their music, fascism and technocratic bullshit, humanity’s parasitic existence and the loss of Geordie.

How did the idea for this band come out of the ashes of Killing Joke?

P: It didn’t actually come out of the ashes of Killing Joke: it came about while I was waiting to finish a new Killing Joke album. Geordie had started it and I put some drums on it. I was introduced to Pauly [Williams], the guitar player in Light of Eternity, by Alec Byrne, who was Killing Joke’s first AR person. He got in touch with me. I hadn’t spoken to him for many years and he said, “I’ve got this friend. He’s got a couple of tracks that I’ve been playing on.” So I said, “Sure, send them over.” I got them; I liked them a lot, played on them and then sent Pauly a whole bunch of ideas that I had been working on, which he also responded to, and so we started recording together…and then Geordie died. And so I was left with a project that I was really enthused by, Light of Eternity, and it was like that’s it – I do this. I asked Fred [Shreck] if he was interested, sent him some tapes and I think it was Pauly’s playing that made him go, “Yeah OK, I’ll get off the couch”.

F: Honestly, I would have done anything he asked me to do. When I heard Pauly’s guitar playing, I think I said something like, “This is kind of like Geordie, but it’s got that sort of sound,” it was just infectious. The songs were so easy to build the lyrics [around] and the melody just kept coming. It was very inspirational. So I said of yeah course. It’s the last thing I needed to do in my life at this point, but I just couldn’t help myself.

Did you want another singer then?

P: I can sing; I sing in my head to every song. But a singing drummer is a little naff. We worked together in the past on a band called Crush back in the ‘90s and I always promised Fred that we’d do something else together, and it was looking a bit like time was running out.

F: So it was like, OK, I realised he’d ask me when I was in my 60s, but yeah, better later than never.

So the sound is similar to Killing Joke; I’m sure you get that a lot. I’d say your drum patterns are more varied and you have more freedom to experiment.

P: Yes, it is a similar sound to Killing Joke and I don’t see why not. Because that’s a sound that I love, that I grew up making and, without Geordie [Walker], I’d be missing that. I don’t think there’s any other sort of sound that I’d be interested in being a part of. But yeah, it does give me a little more freedom to expand my drumming vocabulary a bit, which is also nice. I don’t think there’s the preponderance of the past baggage and personalities. So this is a very new vehicle to express the sort of dissatisfaction we all have, and even that may be in a similar vein to Killing Joke, but those are the themes that go through my head all the time. And Fred’s a great lyricist, so he’s expressing the thoughts that we have about our current [world].

F: [Paul’s] drumming is so essential to the sound of that band. He helped forge that sound, so that’s the way it’s going to be approached. And Pauly, I think he grew up as a big Geordie fan, so he was very influenced by that. I’m from New York by way of Nashville, and I have my own way of singing and expressing things, but they’re similar. I grew up a fan [of Killing Joke]: I think lyrically they were very prophetic and our lyrical content, we’re just expressing what’s going on right now, which is really frightening. One of the reasons I was drawn into this project is because I feel like it’s one of the only ways I have to express the concern that I have; the fear I have. I don’t know if you’ve been to the United States?

Yeah and I hear about it…

F: It’s a big trouble – a global thing. The lyrics may be written about things that are going on there, but they’re everywhere. So they’re very relevant lyrics globally.

I was going to say about the lyrics, they’re angry, raw, dystopian. So there’s all that, but is there any hope as well? What’s the title of that song?

F: The song is ‘Dark Hope’.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure if it was sarcastic?

F: Well, yes, in a sense, but not. The underlying mood of it is…I want there to be hope. ‘Just give us some hope.’ That’s the last thing I say in the song. Without that, what do we have? We live in it; we live in hope. So yes, we’re expressing our concern and our fear and all that. But always, there’s always hope. I have a young daughter, and I need things to get better for her at the very least and everyone of her age.

There’s a couple of songs – ‘Fascist X’ and ‘Aftershock’. You mention political themes in there. Is there anything else you want to say about those?

F: I feel it’s pretty obvious that we’re all spiralling toward that. I try not to be specific about any specific person, but everyone knows who we’re talking about. I’m feeling that we’re all heading there. And the only thing I could do to try to protest it and stop it is to do this.

P: It’s like the pendulum swings back and forth from one extreme to the next, and we’re swinging towards far extreme right now. I don’t know if we ever settle in the middle. But it’s not just that – it’s the whole technology thing as well, which is we’re all hovering on the brink of how fucked up is this going to be, or is it as hopeful as the techno bros like to make it out to be? They don’t really. They’re all like we’ve got to cull people, we cannot survive on the planet, so we need to go into outer space and fucking go out into the galaxy and everything will be all right when AI helps us out with this current mess. I call bullshit.

Well, just talking about bullshit, Elon Musk said he smashed into the moon with a rocket. I don’t even know if that happened – it’s scary that we don’t even know these things. And the junk that they’re putting in space now and the footprint of man…it’s quite scary.

P: Yeah, these people have so much power over us. Killing Joke had a song called ‘I am the Virus’ and people went, “Oh, it’s [about] COVID.” But actually, I wrote that line and it was more about humankind being a virus.

F: Yeah, yeah. The song ‘Nebula’ kind of covers that a little bit too. The idea that we’re left thinking, well, are we these special, unique beings that we’ve always been led to believe we are? Are we really just parasites? We’re in an age where we’re straddling and contemplating those things, and I hope, I hope it’s the former. But what’s the other thing you mentioned: you can’t really believe what you hear or see, and that’s a massive part of all of this because of the fun and all the rest of it. We’re now being exposed to so many different versions of a truth that the truth itself is barely discernible, and there’s so much, as you say, that we’re not being told about. We don’t know what’s behind the curtain. So people have the tools to speculate and then invent, and then we’re all just like, what the fuck?

The pendulum swings back and forth from one extreme to the next, and we’re swinging towards far extreme right now. I don’t know if we ever settle in the middle. But it’s not just that – it’s the whole technology thing as well…we’re all hovering on the brink of how fucked up is this going to be. Or is it as hopeful as the techno bros like to make it out to be: we can’t survive on the planet, so we need to go into outer space and everything will be all right when AI helps us out with this current mess. I call bullshit.

With the space thing, there’s this primordial cosmological sound. Like ‘Nebula’, the sound of it is expansive. The music’s layered; it creates this volume. Are you mirroring the chaos of the universe in your music?

P: I would like to keep an edge of that, yes. Pauly does a lot of soundscapes, but I want to introduce more light and shade to it all. We’ve got a few songs that are like complete bangers, but I’d like to introduce a bit of Hawkwind into it, just a little bit of space trooping, because we’re just beings on this planet in this great universe that’s like beyond comprehension and it’s a beautiful thing. Yeah we’re like stuck and complaining or criticising the political thing. But this band is called Light of Eternity: in the Light of Eternity, none of this matters because the universe will continue, and what will be will be. But I think it’s really important that we enjoy nature…I’d like at least that question of like, ‘Wow, it’s just gone out into the void. What is this to be part of what we’re doing?

Is ‘Lament’ about Geordie?

P: We wrote that exactly when I was going to Geordie’s funeral, so it definitely spoke to that for me, but we’ve all lost. We’ve all lost.

F:That was a period of tremendous loss for everybody in the band, including myself. I lost my mom, I lost a couple of really close friends unexpectedly. So yeah, it’s a song about loss and I think we all zeroed in on it at the same time because we were all going through it at the same time. We all brought that to the table when we recorded it.

The new Killing Joke album you mentioned at the beginning of the interview – is there anything you can say about that? Is it too early now to talk about it?

P: I don’t know. It’s like time’s ticking and I’m losing interest. And the LOE is my prime focus. It would take an awful lot to wedge me out of this right now.

Are you guys writing new material now? You said you’re going to be putting out a lot of new music.

P: Yeah, yeah. We will be putting out. I’m not sure now if it’s going to be another EP or a collection, an album, but we’ve got another couple of tracks to finish when we get back, and then several more new ones. So it’s picking up steam.

I love your stuff, I hope more people get into it. Killing Joke fans, are they interested?

P: We would maybe have hoped more of them would show up, but we’re all getting a bit long in the teeth, and I understand that Killing Joke had a particular set of fans that grew up with the band, so there’s a far more emotional desire for that than there ever will be for this. But I do hope that the sound that we make can fill a little void in their lives as well with Killing Joke not doing anything else.