Godflesh

The artistic trajectory of Justin Broadrick is one of the most spectacular, brilliant, and daring in the history of rock. His synthesis of genres and recording techniques has created one of the most powerful "voices" in modern music, capable of impacting the psyche with the force of a natural disaster.
Broadrick is also one of the men who attempted to build a bridge between the most extreme ends of the harshest rock music: between punk rock and industrial music.

Justin Broadrick, guitarist for Napalm Death, formed Head Of David in the mid-1980s. Initially, on the EP Dogbreath (Blast First, 1986), it seemed the group simply wanted to further darken the sound of Black Sabbath, but the album LP (Blast, 1986) or CD (Blast, 1986), depending on the format, and tracks like Joyride Burning X and Snuff Rider MC gradually shifted the focus toward a fusion of industrial modes and heavy metal. Dustbowl (Blast First, 1988) refined the formula, borrowing extremely corrupted linguistic codes from Killing Joke, Sonic Youth, and Big Black.

Broadrick left the group to focus on Fall Of Because, a trio with guitarist Paul Neville and bassist Christian Green (the others would release a new album in 1991). Then, further slowing down the pace at which he had been emulating Black Sabbath, switching to guitar while keeping Green on bass, Broadrick created Godflesh.

Ultra-low, ultra-heavy chords that thunder like cannon fire, meticulously funeral tempos, end-of-the-world tape loops make the first Godflesh (Silverfish, 1988) one of the darkest albums since the early Swans. Avalanche Master Song and Godhead, despite their sparse essentialism, are drill-bit grunge that shakes the walls, cemetery-like liturgies made even darker and more methodical by distortion and tape loops. Even the more driving tracks, like Veins and Weak Flesh, remain far from grindcore frenzy. Ice Nerveshatter is the Sister Ray of the album, a long, frenzied piece with a (relatively) tribal rhythm, devastated by noise and vocals that sound like the scream of a dying man.

Streetcleaner (Earache, 1989) incorporates more industrial sounds, that is, heavy rhythms and electronic drones. Much harsher and darker, the sound of each track actually recaptures the power of grindcore, but in a different form, one more derived from Killing Joke and Big Black. The result are catacomb dances like Dream Long Dead and Dead Head, adorned with all the vocal, guitar, and percussive excesses of grindcore and industrial music. Gothic atmospheres, where suspense and hallucinations blur together, culminate in Head Dirt, with its extremely dark cloud of distortion, occasionally pierced by muffled strikes in the void of percussion and bass.
The industrial atmospheres instead degenerate into simulations of noise and metronomic patterns, as in Pulp. The title track and Like Rats compose an oppressive fresco of the human condition, a poem of hatred. Mighty Trust Krusher is emblematic of how these songs (the sharp guitar stabs, the profound echoes, the relentless rhythms, the ferocious screams) could serve as soundtracks for sci-fi horror films.

On the reissue of the first album, an unreleased track is also included: the terrifying thirteen minutes of Wounds, which belongs to this extreme dance style, a kind of Bolero for robots.

In the same year, the first EP by Sweet Tooth, Soft White Underbelly (Staindrop), was also released, a side project in which Broadrick uses the Godflesh style in an even more violently experimental way.

With the EP Slavestate (Earache, 1991) and the single Slateman, Godflesh’s conversion to mass-danceable music gained traction. The progress compared to Streetcleaner seems minimal, but in reality the role and structure of rhythm have changed—from a psychological factor into a bodily one.

Pure (Earache, 1992), featuring Robert Hampson of Loop on guitar, completes the transformation. The heavy-metal flurries of guitar, stormy rhythms, and deranged screams leave no doubt as to the inspiration behind Spite: Ministry on a particularly depressed day. The distorted buzzing, cascading feedback, and syncopated groove of I Wasn't Born To Follow descend from Killing Joke via Helios Creed. The title track is the aesthetic manifesto of this new course: a ferociously distorted guitar repeated mechanically over a harmonic structure reduced to two rhythms—one regular beat-box rhythm and one syncopated drum pattern; their take on minimalism.
Perhaps the most creative use of guitar riffs comes in the martial Baby Blue Eyes, which expresses the same concept of “dub-industrial minimalism” in tighter rhythmic structures (it is the fastest track of their career). When at times the method reduces to a powerless drone (in the long “Monotremata”) or a cathartic bath of pure noise (in the equally long Love, Hate), any self-indulgence is ridiculed by Pure II, an aural montage of feedback, tape loops, and atonal harmonics that proceeds relentlessly for over twenty minutes; their (horribly dissonant) variant of Eno’s “ambient” music and serious competition for Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.

Preceded by the EP Merciless (Columbia), a refined exercise in deconstructing the elements of Pure, particularly in Flowers, and the brutal single Crush My Soul, the album Selfless (Earache, 1994) finally emerges.
A less brutal and cynical work, more moody and melodramatic, which restores the traditional role of melodies and riffs, it unfolds as a long, monotonous state of abandonment—from the weary dragging of Bigot to the catatonic cadences of Black Boned Angel, which would delight a Lydia Lunch. However, the band ends up relying too heavily on riffs, as in the tank-like Heartless, neglecting everything else. The album, which even boasts a seven-minute Mantra (hypnotic and minimalist, but not quite transcendent) and a twenty-minute-plus Go Spread Your Wings (a grand-guignol spectacle that could have been attempted only by a heroin-laden Jim Morrison), abandons the act of “making music” and lets the music “become” on its own, in accordance with the precepts of certain Eastern mysticism.

Broadrick’s next creation was Final, formed in 1994 on the ashes of experiments from the 1980s. One (Sentrax, 1993) is the most radical work of his career, seven collages of noise that connect directly to the earliest industrial music, through ambient and gothic influences.

2 (Sentrax, 1996), the second Final album, is equally cryptic: the nine tracks oscillate between subsonic vibrations (the entire 24 minutes of the eighth track) and deafening drones, at times approaching the ambient music of Brian Eno (especially the third track), at other times returning to the minimalist experiments of LaMonte Young (for example, the sixth track). Final also released the instrumental single Flow/ Openings (Manifold), one of their high points, stylistically similar to the album, and the EP Solaris (Alley Sweeper, 1996), full of almost “cosmic” compositions. The following year saw the release of the single Urge/ Fall (Fever Pitch, 1997) and the album The First Millionth Of A Second (Manifold, 1997), both much darker and more menacing (New Species and Foundations serve as a bridge to the cosmic tone of the previous EP).

With Andy Hawkins of Blind Idiot God, under the pseudonym Azonic, Justin Broadrick also recorded Skinner's Black Laboratories (Sub Rosa, 1995), on which he delivers four tracks titled Guitar at the boundary between Robert Fripp and Fred Frith.

Broadrick is also active with Kevin Martin (God) in Techno Animal.

The explosive Godflesh power trio returned with Songs Of Love And Hate (Earache, 1996). The album is a jumble of clichés, overused signs, and self-references. While the vocals are increasingly less compelling and the drums pound monotonously, Green’s bass has become a versatile and martial instrument, and the guitar retains its coldly abrasive tone. Their specialty remains sickly atmospheres of extreme tension, from the anguished grindcore of Wake to the long, hallucinatory psychodrama of Gift From Heaven; the moans, disturbances, and grimly industrial polyrhythms of Circle Of Shit recite their career from memory, but add nothing that wasn’t already known.
Broadrick also indulges too much in his favorite perversion: sampling and endlessly recycling wicked riffs. Sterile Prophet seems built on the repetition of a Black Sabbath fragment, as if a tribute to the darkest side of dark-rock, and the staggering riff echoing through Hunter seems stamped Pearl Jam.
If anything, the almost psychedelic chaos of Almost Heaven, closing the album, hints at something new emerging from its cloud of reverbs, its spectral rattlings, and its galactic frequencies.

Us And Them (Earache, 1999) was the first Godflesh album to disappoint. Broadrick and Green indulge in technology per se, and only occasionally do they match the brutal attitude of the early records. Instead, they parade a number of experiments on the format of dance music, whether hip hop (Descent) or breakbeat (Control Freak), drum'n'bass (I Me Mine) or funk (Defiled).

Hymns (Music For Nations, 2001), with Ted Parsons of Prong on drums replacing the drum machine, continues the downhill trend inaugurated with the previous one, although it restores Godflesh as the killer machine and dispenses with the drum'n'bass and hip-hop junk. Godflesh have never sounded so "normal". The music does not bite and does not shock. In fact, it is fairly pointless. The lengthy Jesu meanders without ever making a point, and another slow number, Antihuman, promises (tension) without delivering (release). Defeated, Voidhead and Vampires are closer to classic Godflesh, but too unfocused and opaque compared with the manic and precise onslaught of the early albums.

Justin Broadrick's next project, Jesu, debuted with the 40-minute two-song EP Heart Ache (Dry Run, 2004 - Avalanche, 2009), entirely played by him (vocals, guitar, keyboards, drum-machine). The 20-minute Heartache, sounding at times like a melodic version of Godflesh, is the manifesto of Jesu's slow-motion repetitive "noise and drone" music. The stream of consciousness is actually relatively relaxed, shunning the lugubrious overtones of doom-metal in favor of mind-bending distortions and claw-like riffs, sustained vocal and ogan drones, and an elegiac psychedelic litany. The other piece, Ruined, does achieve the stereotypical "stoned" heaviness, but both before and after it indulges in sparse atmospheric repetition.

Jesu's full-length Jesu (Hydra Head, 2005), featuring a regular trio of guitar, bass and drums. applied the same method to a relatively quiet madness. Broadrick is unusually calm as he plays divinity, letting simpler emotions surface that Godflesh had banned as apocrypha: the nine-minute Your Path To Divinity features a droning organ that achieves quasi-religious intensity; the eleven-minute funereal elegy Walk on Water is accompanied by martial guitar patterns and mellotron-like drones; the ten-minute pseudo-shoegazing Friends Are Evil juxtaposes an Hendrix-ian distortion and a lo-fi pop litany; the ten-minute psychedelic hymn Sun Day releases waves of cosmic vocals against a slowly-revolving heavely-reverberated drone; the nine-minute Man Woman is the only piece that evokes the classics, with growl and panzer rhythm (but with all sorts of lengthy detours). The two lengthy excursions of Jesus' EP Sun Down/ Sun Rise (Aurora Borealis) displayed the same huge gothic sound. Jesu's four-song EP Silver (Hydra Head, 2006) further confused the issue by offering shoegaze-pop music (with vocals and real melodies).

Final's double-CD 147-minute 3 (Neurot, 2006) is an abstract foggy warped glitchy droning symphony in 27 movements that mixes Brian Eno and Autechre. Its limit is precisely that it is so fragmented that the power of its tender gloom is too easily dispelled.

The gravitational attraction of pop music is even stronger on Jesu's second album, Conqueror (Hydra Head, 2007). Each song is, first and foremost, a romantic pop creation, which is then wrapped in disorienting but never overwhelming guitar noise. Conqueror is actually similar to latter-day Pink Floyd's music, dominated by a distorted guitar excursion. And so is the slightly more abstract Weightless and Horizontal. Transfigure sounds like a sweeter version of Dinosaur Jr. There's even an atmospheric organ (of the kind one would expect in a U2 album) in Mother Earth. The martial Bright Eyes reaches perhaps the melodic zenith of the album, a slo-core ballad with a soaring guitar line. Alas, Broadrick's vocals are far from being exciting, and the pattern keeps repeating itself with less and less interesting melodies.. Justin Broadrick's Jesu did to industrial music what My Bloody Valentine did to psychedelic music.

The EP Lifeline (2007) was, on the other hand, a disappointing experiment.

J2 (The End, 2008) is a collaboration between Jarboe and Justin Broadrick devoted to ambient electronic songs.

Final's Dead Air (Utech, 2008) is a mixed bag (probably just a collection of unfinished notes) that offers some of his most brutal industrial nightmares while indulging in quirky quasi-dance numbers. The Final project was beginning to venture into abstract digital soundsculpting, as evidenced on Afar (Avalanche, 2008) and Reading All The Right Signals Wrong (No Quarter, 2009).

Justin Broadrick and Isis' Aaron Turner joined forces to scupt the noisy convoluted dub-infected industrial-metal mayhem of Grey Machine's Disconnected (Hydra Head, 2009) that actually harked back to the sound of Godflesh (the single Vultures Descend, When Attention Just Isn't Enough, Wasted, Sweatshop).

The four-song EP Opiate Sun (Caldo Verde, 2009) represented a new peak in Jesu's melodic trend. Pale Sketches (Avalanche, 2009) is a compilation of rare and unreleased Jesu tracks recorded between 2000 and 2007.

Jesu's Infinity (Avalanche, 2009) contains a 49-minute concerto for manic depression. After three minutes the electronic beat and the guitar riff fall into place, although the vocals intone a languid litany that is rather irrelevant. Slowly-grinding stoner-riffs introduce a melodramatic growling narrative. An even slower and sloppier guitar meditation leads to a dilated elegy sung in the regular register. The music has lost its energy and is dying. Its emotional core remains inscrutable.

Final + Fear Falls Burning (Conspiracy, 2011) was a collaboration between Justin Broadrick and Dirk Serries.

Jesu's journey towards purgatory continued with Ascension (Caldo Verde, 2011), Broadrick's most moderate album yet, with songs that were beginning to really sound like (melodic) songs (Fools, Ascension).

Broadrick also sculpted the two lengthy suites of electronic noise on Apparitions (Utech, 2010), credited to White Static Demon.

Justin Broadrick's next project was JK Flesh, whose Posthuman (3by3, 2012) returned to the sound and ethos of Techno Animal with industrial-metal guitar brutality and neurotic rhythms (but adjusted to the fashionable styles of the moment like dubstep). As an antidote to the mellow Jesu, JK Flesh works; but as a reminder of past Godflesh/Techno Animal glory it stands as a poor imitation.

Valley of Fear (Legion Blotan, 2012) documents a collaboration between Justin Broadrick, Matthew Bower and Samantha Davis, a bit repetitive and self-indulgent.

Justin Broadrick reformed Godflesh for A World Lit Only By Fire (Avalanche, 2014), a very minor work. There is real voodoo-cyborg terror in Obeyed, with a wildly distorted guitar break, and in the ghostly psychedelic tour de force Forgive Our Fathers (like Black Sabbath covering Jimi Hendrix' Voodoo Child), but too many songs sound comical. Shut Me Down sound like a slow-motion square dance, Life Giver Life Taker sounds like an psychedelic remix of a Cramps voodoobilly, the magniloquent boogie Carrion sounds like a doom-metal version of a Velvet Underground song. The noisy industrial rave-up of New Dark Ages is user-friendly Godflesh. Too often they sound grotesque and clownish.