GODFLESH - Decay

Is Godflesh going out with a double bang? We cannot tell before "The End", which will be the last studio album next year, coming after Justin Broadrick's announcement that he cannot perform the intense harsh vocals  of Godflesh anymore without seriously risking his health.

We know however that the second to last album before the band's retirement already paves the way for one of the most glorious goodbyes in the history of extreme music.

GODFLESH - Decay (white vinyl LP) (2026)

"Decay" had been written and recorded before Broadrick being hospitalized with inguinal hernia in March, but this album has an urgency and intensity as if he already had a foreboding of the duo's end and wanted Godflesh to leave on an absolutely devastating mark. "Decay" is their most brutal and harrowing work since "A World Lit Only By Fire", yet this time it's not as much due to sheer riff power, but more due a combination of suffocating atmosphere, destructively crushing production and a stylistic return to some elements of their earliest releases from the late 1980's.

First of all the sounds and rhythms of the drum computer feel very angular, brutal, classic. And while the special energy of the low-fi production on "Streetcleaner" cannot be reproduced, "Decay" gives us something which somehow feels equally perfectly imperfect. Just listen to "Feral Colony", which builds upon the primitivism of the self-titled debut, and how during the verses and bridges Ben Green's signature bass completey crunches everything under it - so delicious!

Another quite prominent element is a certain bending of notes and howling of leads which just feels very old school. Maybe this is already one step towards Justin Broadrick playing a guitar with a tremolo - which he has teased to do on "The End" for the first time since 1989 on "Streetcleaner".

The album only consists of six tracks, but already the squelshing, crawling opener "Master and Slave" with its pummeling Drone and Noise, its unsettling synths and horrifyingly distorted vocals tortures us in the best way for almost nine minutes.

During the overpowering first impression of this album one might miss that under all the mayhem "Decay" actually features some peak Godflesh songwriting. The opener of side B, "Fear of Man" for example is a particularly strong track, which feels like a hybrid of the beats and lead guitars of "Christbait Rising" ("Streetcleaner"), the riffs of "Xynoybis" ("Selfless") and that scratching guitar sound from "Perfect Skin" ("Slavestate"), which sounds like an old printer. What a killer!

But don't think Broadrick and Green wane after that. Even though "Fodder" concerns itself less with musicality or even buried beauty, but works rather as an excorcism through sonic dystopia.

Oh wait! Why did I waste that description? It's probably even much more fitting for the twelve minute long closer "Consume Me". This terrifying behemoth raises the levels for bleakness with alienated sounds, which point far beyond the amount of merzbowish Noise we're used to in Godflesh. And indeed it is said that this track is foreshadowing White Light District, Broadrick's new upcoming solo project and outlet for his most "brutal, industrial, heavy" material.

Even with Godflesh being gone again (and for good this time); between White Light District, Jesu and all the other things he's doing there'll surely be no shortage of new Broadrick music and music-like Noise anytime soon.

And of course with that also grows the enormous mountain of great releases to return to. "Decay" certainly is one of the most grim and disturbing among those. Fantastic!

Released by Relapse Records comes in many different colour and packaging variations. Since I'm a sucker for white vinyl and also like the cover artwork better with a light background, I chose the white gatefold variant: