Geordie Walker, KILLING JOKE guitarist, dead at 64

Killing Joke's Geordie Walker has died. He was 64. The guitarist reportedly suffered a stroke two days before his passing.

The sad news was confirmed by Walker's friend Luca Signorelli, who wrote on his Facebook page: "This morning I got a phone call, telling me that Kevin 'Geordie' Walker had died few hours ago in Prague, following a massive stroke last Friday."

Pigface ringleader Martin Atkins — Walker's occasional bandmate in Killing Joke, as well as the industrial supergroups Murder, Inc. and the Damage Manual — also confirmed the news. He shared a video of Damage Manual's "Laugh Track" to his Facebook page with the caption "gutted." In the comments, Atkins wrote, "Geordie has passed," and he later posted on Twitter/X: "#GodBless Geordie Walker."

Co-founded in 1978 by Walker along with singer Jaz Coleman, bassist Youth and drummer Paul Ferguson, Killing Joke were a hugely influential band, particularly in the realms of post-punk, industrial rock and heavy metal.

In an in-depth 2013 story on the group, Revolver wrote of Killing Joke: "Metallica covered them. Nirvana ripped them off. Nine Inch Nails remixed them. But that's just the tip of the iceberg." (Metallica covered "The Wait" on the Garage Days Re-Revisited EP, while the main riff to Nirvana's "Come as You Are" sounds unmistakably like that of Killing Joke's "Eighties.")

The band released 15 full-length albums, the most recent being 2015's Pylon. Killing Joke's last release was the stand-alone single "Full Spectrum Dominance," which they just dropped in March, following up the 2022 EP Lord of Chaos.