Justin Broadrick is back with... nah, that's wrong. When has Justin Broadrick actually ever been away? Well, nevermind. Here are two new releases of his main creative outlets, both digging deep in classic periods of his own discography:
JESU - Pity/Piety (white with gold splatter 12") (2023)
Two sides, seventeen minutes each, so what is it? The official reading is that these two longtracks called "Pity" and "Piety" form an EP. The vinyl looks as rusty as that angel on the minimalistic cover. Wouldn't have called this a "gold splatter" edition, but it's cool anyway.
The music? Shoegazy, dreamy, yet also dissonant and emotionally crushing this release gathers a lot of typical Jesu elements. I hear the sad dragging of the split with Battle of Mice, the deliberate miscords of "Everyday I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came", the hard electronic drums of those releases closer to the mechanical aspects of Godflesh. I guess I hear almost everything I wish for in Jesu. Especially the hypnotic second half of "Piety" which lets its motif rise to heavenly heights puts this EP easily at par with all the greatest stuff Broadrick has done with this project since 2004. Definitely not one a fan should skip.
The music? Shoegazy, dreamy, yet also dissonant and emotionally crushing this release gathers a lot of typical Jesu elements. I hear the sad dragging of the split with Battle of Mice, the deliberate miscords of "Everyday I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came", the hard electronic drums of those releases closer to the mechanical aspects of Godflesh. I guess I hear almost everything I wish for in Jesu. Especially the hypnotic second half of "Piety" which lets its motif rise to heavenly heights puts this EP easily at par with all the greatest stuff Broadrick has done with this project since 2004. Definitely not one a fan should skip.
GODFLESH - Purge (silver vinyl LP) (2023)
Similar to the pity / piety wordplay, the new Godflesh album echoes the title of the 1991 classic "Pure", and alongside details which would also have suited the late ninetees' works "Songs of Love and Hate" and "Us and Them" it definitely is the cold "Pure" sound which is revisited here the most.
BC Green's rumbling bass, the brutally sawing riffs and nastily screeching leads over agile programmed or sampled drums. Minimanihilist lyrics with an average count of sixteen words per track, which Broadrick is mercilessly shouting into your face or singing to his pained self.
The key element of repetition just in that dosage which has the desired effect of hammering the sound into your psyche, yet not overdoing it to a point where it isn't enjoyable anymore. Analogous to the Roadburn live recording of "Pure" has been updated to a sludgier, more guitar-centric aesthetic, but in its icy English heart "Purge" truly is the throwback it openly admits it is.
This means that this third post reunion album is neither as focussed on sheer brutality as "A World Lit Only By Fire" nor as experimental and innovative as "Post Self". But while its referential nature may lose it some originality points, the execution is honest and compelling enough to let "Purge" sit comfortably between both predecessors. And of course the world "comfortable" seems wildly misplaced in the context of the bleak force of existential anxiety like this.
The perfect soundtrack to the byeffects of the strong antibiotics I'm currently taking. Godflesh by the numbers maybe, but the numbers are still as staggering and uncompromising as decades ago.
BC Green's rumbling bass, the brutally sawing riffs and nastily screeching leads over agile programmed or sampled drums. Minimanihilist lyrics with an average count of sixteen words per track, which Broadrick is mercilessly shouting into your face or singing to his pained self.
The key element of repetition just in that dosage which has the desired effect of hammering the sound into your psyche, yet not overdoing it to a point where it isn't enjoyable anymore. Analogous to the Roadburn live recording of "Pure" has been updated to a sludgier, more guitar-centric aesthetic, but in its icy English heart "Purge" truly is the throwback it openly admits it is.
This means that this third post reunion album is neither as focussed on sheer brutality as "A World Lit Only By Fire" nor as experimental and innovative as "Post Self". But while its referential nature may lose it some originality points, the execution is honest and compelling enough to let "Purge" sit comfortably between both predecessors. And of course the world "comfortable" seems wildly misplaced in the context of the bleak force of existential anxiety like this.
The perfect soundtrack to the byeffects of the strong antibiotics I'm currently taking. Godflesh by the numbers maybe, but the numbers are still as staggering and uncompromising as decades ago.
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