Friday Full-Length: Godflesh, Godflesh
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 26th, 2021 by JJ KoczanIt’s been 33 years since Godflesh released this self-titled EP, and it’s still ahead of its time. That’s utter hyperbole, right? Nonsense. The kind of fluff lazy writers throw out there when something is good and has made an impact. For sure. Until you listen to it.
Godflesh, founded by guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Justin K. Broadrick and bassist G.C. Green following a stint together in a group called Fall of Because, weren’t the first band out there to bring together the sides of electronic music and rock. Krautrock had been doing it for over a decade by then. Ministry were offering up The Land of Rape and Honey the same year, and Skinny Puppy had already been going for more than half a decade, as well as others in the darker/gothier vein. But with Broadrick and Green, the rawness of their presentation became an instrument unto itself, and the repetitive churn of the drum machine they were playing to on these tracks became in itself an emblem of the disaffection, monotony, and emotional malaise the songs were bringing to bear.
They were kids asking “what the fuck?” and this EP became their way of phrasing the question.
The rumble of “Avalanche Master Song,” the echoes and whines in “Veins,” the oh-so-very-very-very-English brooding in “Godhead” and the mechanized discordant noise of “Spinebender” — these songs have a solid emotive base under them, and for all the putoff and bombast one might hear in their crashing, it’s a fragile sound, like the duo were processing trauma as much as drum beats. The guttural dismay in “Weak Flesh” and almost punkish run that ensues there feels with the benefit of over three decades of hindsight almost singular in its expression. Godflesh might not have been the first — much as fellow Birmingham natives Black Sabbath weren’t the first to bring together blues rock and a heavier low-end underpinning — but no one had done it quite like they were doing it, and the sonic persona that comes through on the six tracks of the original Godflesh EP, still just half an hour long, are post-modernism in the form of metallic songwriting. That feeling of abandonment in “Ice Nerveshatter?” Yeah, that’s god being dead.
Lines in that song like, “I am defeated, I gotta walk away/I won’t walk away, let me see/And I needed this you watch me/I’ll bleed to death, watch me,” and the screams and concluding digital wash to which they lead bring a kind of human, personal edge to what seems so much to be a purposefully inhuman sound, Broadrick‘s shouts echoing out into nothing. There are other bands who built entire careers off trying to accomplish the same thing and not doing it nearly so organically.
True, the first sounds you hear on the EP are digitized. It’s almost keyboard grindcore behind a metronome count-in — what today might be a click track with a digital boop — and then a few seconds later, the song crashes in. And I do mean “crashes,” as in, it almost comes across as accidental. In those key first few seconds, Godflesh aren’t trying to make some grand triumphant entrance; “Here we are, you didn’t even know you’d been waiting for us.” Instead, “Avalanche Master Song” 
excoriates hypocrisy in working class culture — these were the Thatcher years — and unveils a perspective that is urgent, clever, and vicious, which goes on not to spare the self from its own wrath, lashing in and out alike.
Godflesh are of a caliber of band, like Sabbath, like Motörhead, where the influence they’ve had is pervasive and monumental enough that there’s really no way to fairly estimate it. At least two generations of bands across disparate genres have benefitted by learning from their work, whether it was the rise of industrial-tinged metal in the ’90s (for better or worse; some of that stuff was and remains awful), a current wave of same, or the rhythmic cues that a group like Isis took from Godflesh and made their own. Of course Godflesh — which would see reissue through Earache in 1990 with “Wounds” and “Streetcleaner 2” added, to bring the running time over a CD-era’s 50-minute span — would end overshadowed by its successor in the band’s 1989 landmark, Streetcleaner, and yeah, fair enough for the continued relevance that record and the band’s subsequent work has had. But the EP serves as a convenient, potent reminder of how just because something involves synthesizer or keyboard or a drum machine, that doesn’t mean it needs to be void of emotion.
One of the most important aspects to keep in mind when listening to the Godflesh EP — which for context I’d recommend doing without the extra tracks included in the version above, though they serve a different purpose — is how raw it is. It was recorded by the band, and it sounds like it, but that becomes essential to the character of the release. So much of the industrial that emerged in Godflesh‘s wake was chrome-polished. Godflesh sound like they’re covered in rust and oil sludge. In this way, the intervening years not only makes these songs a challenge to the chestbeating heavy metal that was coming out at the time, something that dared to find strength in its own fragility, but a further challenge to those who would cloak themselves in a mechanized veneer to remain human at the core. In 33 years, no one has managed to do this thing as well as this band.
Between 1989 and 2001, Godflesh toured the world and put out six albums, the last one of which, 2001’s Hymns, led Broadrick into his next project, the more melodic and atmospheric Jesu. Godflesh would reunite a decade later and since 2011 have continued to tour and offer releases on their own terms — the 2014 EP, Decline & Fall (review here), was followed that same year by A World Lit Only by Fire (review here), and after several more years of shows, they offered Post Self (review here) late in 2017. It remains their most recent outing, but Broadrick has been active as ever, working under his own name, his alias JK Flesh and releasing Jesu‘s Terminus (discussed here) in 2020 as their first full-length in seven years.
I should note that the above stream comes from the Earache Bandcamp page. The band also has a separate Bandcamp set up with their more recent stuff. I know the label has been involved in a number of contract disputes over the years, but can’t speak to whether or not they have one with Godflesh. I just wanted to make sure you had the link to their newer material as well.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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I need some Advil. Hang on.
There.
I went back to the oral surgeon’s office this week because despite the fact that the molar is now gone — bye bye — the fistula on the side of my gumline was still there and needed to be drained. I’ve done two rounds of antibiotics. I’m thinking it might just be time to have my jaw replaced with a robotic one like whatshisface from The Venture Bros., and yes, I know Venture Bros. because I’m a dude of a certain age.
Anyway, it continues to be sore as well. It’s now been over two weeks but the guy who removed the tooth called the roots “stubborn,” so it’s not such a surprise given the amount of physical effort I saw on his part that, yeah, I’d feel some residual discomfort. It was the pus that sent me back to the office. I saw a different surgeon, who first congratulated me on the size of the original infection in my jaw — “that’s one for the record books” — didn’t take an x-ray, and then told me everything looked good. That was enough to get me out of the office, but on further thought it just seems too easy.
This shit was infected for the better part of 2020 and I just couldn’t do anything about it. So I lost the tooth — I won’t miss it — and had the infection scraped out and the antibiotics and the bone graft, but yeah, it all still seems not-as-complicated-as-it-possibly-could-be-and-therefore-inevitably-must-be. I have my originally-scheduled follow-up Monday afternoon, and I just imagine the guy doing an x-ray, seeing there’s still more infection underneath, and having to go back in, scrape out the first graft, tunnel deeper into the bone of my jaw, which, yes, had a gaping hole in it, and then give me yet another graft at the end of that process. Doesn’t sound likely to you? Welcome to your life not as me.
Speaking of schedules, I’m supposedly getting my first COVID-19 vaccine dose this afternoon. I’ll believe it when they pull the needle back out from my arm. The Patient Mrs. had her second shot on… Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday. It summarily put her on her ass for the bulk of yesterday, fever, aches. She says she’s a little headachy today but otherwise alright. Seems a fair trade to avoid the ol’ firelung there.
Yesterday morning, I went to Moonlight Mile in Hoboken and recorded vocals on a demo for what might be a new project in the works. We’ll see. It was pretty brutal, and it all came together on the quick. I reached out to them with the idea I think on Monday. In less than 24 hours, there was the demo track (and two more in the works besides) waiting for vocals. I took Wednesday to get lyrics and patterns, then recorded yesterday. As a proof-of-concept, I thought it came out well, but we’ll see. They might tell me to fuck off. Always a possibility. I have never been easy to work with on really any level. You may be surprised to find out I have a habit of expressing opinions. I know, right?
Plus I’m crazy and suck at reading people. So yeah, I try to walk on eggshells, especially starting something new. I get excited and forget myself.
In any case, if nothing else comes of it, recording screams and grows on that one track I did yesterday was the most fun I ever had with a studio experience. If it goes nowhere, I’d be perfectly happy to have that as my last-ever memory of recording. Even with the jaw pain.
I put more logs on the fire in the fireplace. It’s 9AM. It’s been chilly in the mornings as I’ve been getting up, so I light a fire and at least it warms my brain if nothing else. Then I drink coffee and get overheated. Then I drink iced tea and get cold again. Then I type some. And that’s existence.
No Gimme show this week, but I turned in the playlist for the one next Friday and voice recordings. I do more talking on it, which they asked for, in shorter breaks. And most of it is shorter songs. The longest I think was Earthless at 14 minutes. Compared to last episode which only had two tracks, that’s quite a shift.
Busy week as ever. More questionnaires and reviews and streams and all this and that. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Stay well, stay hydrated. I’ll be around if anyone needs me.
FRM.
forward boogie into a Floydian midsection en route to a showoff solo and rousing finish — the more classic-metal-tinged “Nightwolf” (sounds like Dio to me, right up to the fadeout) and the back and forth finale, “O’Cataa,” which shifts between softer harmony vocals and heavier rollout, patient and fluid all the while.
