Coleman is known for his unique raspy baritone voice and intense stage presence (occasionally appearing wearing face makeup).

In the first part of their career, Coleman also played synth while singing, adding electronic atonal sounds to create a disturbing atmosphere to their music.

Killing Joke have influenced numerous bands such as Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Jane's Addiction, My Bloody Valentine, Faith No More, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Godflesh, Soundgarden, Metallica[2] and Marilyn Manson.

He studied piano and violin under Eric Coleridge, head of music for Cheltenham College, until the age of 17, and was a member of several cathedral choirs in England.

[8] Coleman contributed lead vocals and keyboards to the band's songs, which are categorised as post-punk, and the music later inspired the industrial rock and metal genres.

Coleman once quit Killing Joke temporarily following a gig in 1982; the day after, he travelled to Iceland and announced his intention to become a classical composer.

Ten years of studying and ongoing Killing Joke involvement later, he commenced conducting and worked with some of the world's leading orchestras.

[16] Also commissioned by the Royal Opera House was Coleman's Unwanted, a concerto grosso for violin, viola and string orchestra whose theme portrays the plight of the Romany people of central Europe.

This work was in collaboration with Czech photographer Jana Tržilová,[17] whose portraits of the Roma taken within her own country moved the composer with their deep compassion and humanity.

On 22 March 2003, Coleman was commissioned by the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter[18] (ICAM) to compose a three-part concerto Music of the Quantum,[19] expressing the ideas of the quantum and emergence in musical form, which he co-produced with his elder brother, Piers Coleman (born 13 February 1958), who is a condensed matter physicist at Rutgers University.

[23] In 2009, Coleman recorded the Nirvana Suite with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, and played summer festivals across Europe with Killing Joke.

[25] In 2010, Coleman completed his Magna Suscitatio for solo violin, chorus and full orchestra, which illustrates the process of transformation and illumination of the human condition "from our current barbaric state".

In 2014, Coleman began the year by conducting the NSO Symphony Orchestra (UAE) for the opening ceremony of the Dubai World Cup, which was broadcast to 160 countries.

[26] Later that year, Coleman recorded with the Moscow State Film Orchestra and performed his Zep Symphony some 30 kilometres outside St. Petersburg at Gatchina Palace for the White Night gala with the Minsk Philharmonic.

[29] 2015 saw the release of Tambours du Bronx's album Corros, featuring a collaboration with Coleman on the track "Human Smile".

"[33][34] In September 2016, Coleman was invited by the Étrange festival in Paris for a "carte blanche" programme of six films and a spoken word performance.

He also co-produced a documentary-style music film with Filmmaker Shaun Pettigrew called "The Death And Resurrection Show", named after a song on Killing Joke's 2003 album.

The studio was closed after Coleman produced the ninth album of New Zealand band Shihad, FVEY, which was released in the second half of 2014.

[41] Titled Letters from Cythera, it was released in early 2014 and was described by Coleman as an overview of "how the occult sciences have shaped my philosophical outlook expounding on my preferred system for a personalized renaissance (the supersynthesis)"—Coleman stated that the book was written between 2007 and 2008.