Go Spread Your Wings: The Antihuman Noise Of Godflesh

There are some records that it’s hard to imagine, years later, hearing upon their initial release. ‘Streetcleaner’, the 1989 debut LP from industrial metal duo Godflesh, is one such album. A colossal illustration of dystopian intent from a band that sounded like little else recorded before or since, ‘Streetcleaner’ has a good claim to being the heaviest album of all time.

Justin K. Broadrick’s discordant, churning guitars and feral howls aligned with G. C. Green’s pummelling bass and the mechanical repetition of programmed drums to create something so brutally ferocious that the countless bands it later inspired have struggled to even come close to replicating it.

Twenty-five years later and Godflesh are back with the EP ‘Decline and Fall’, following three and a half years of memorable reunion shows. They have recently completed a UK co-headline tour with Loop, their space-rock adventuring contemporaries, and will release the album ‘World Lit Only By Fire’ later this year. It seems as good a time as any, then, to recognise Godflesh’s huge influence on the world of extreme music, one only truly comparable to the likes of Neurosis and Swans in their field.

The most important aspect of Godflesh, however, was arguably not musical at all. Few bands have ever sounded quite so misanthropic as they did throughout their career, especially early on. From Broadrick’s demented roar of “Breed… like rats” on the opening track of ‘Streetcleaner’ to the cry of “You’re fucked… you’ve lost” at the end of ‘Hymns’, the band’s last album, the duo’s outlook has always revelled in nihilism and an alternately despairing and disgusted view of humanity. If ever a band has sounded genuinely hateful, and not just immaturely angst-ridden, then it’s Godflesh.

This perhaps isn’t surprising given the band’s background. Growing up on the council estates of inner city Birmingham, Broadrick was enmeshed in the industrialism of Throbbing Gristle and the power electronics of Whitehouse by the time he hit his teens. He and Green had both been playing in experimentally-minded heavy bands since their early teens and Broadrick had joined, helped shape and left Napalm Death (his fingerprints are all over side one of 'Scum') before turning 18. This was the 1980s and Godflesh’s world was shaped by the divisive politics of Thatcherism. The bleak decay of industrial Britain is as inherent a part of their music as their, largely extreme, musical influences.

Of course, these influences extended far beyond the worlds of industrial and metal music. Swans were crucial, as was the burgeoning electronic music scene, stretching from Brian Eno’s ambience to Aphex Twin’s acid-fuelled techno experimentation. Perhaps most important, and most overlooked to this day by fans of the band, was the influence of contemporary hip hop, specifically the aggression and beats of pioneering groups like Public Enemy.

Although Godflesh have undoubtedly become as much of a part of metal’s history as that of iconoclastic experimentalism, they set themselves apart from every other metal band of the time by using diverse influences to create music even heavier and even more extreme than their peers.

Mothra, the lead single from 1992’s ‘Pure’ (which featured second guitarists Robert Hampson and Paul Neville), remains a potent example of everything Godflesh had become by their second album. Even more genre-defying than ‘Streetcleaner’, ‘Mothra was also’, dare one say it, verging on accessible.

The beats were still far from human but they spoke volumes for the potential of mixing markedly different musical forms with metal, a genre that, at that point, had not quite mutated into the genuinely multi-faceted beast that it is today. That the band’s third album, ‘Selfless’, was released on Columbia Records is demonstrative of the fact that more and more people were starting to pay attention, as well as providing one of the first examples of metal’s mainstream crossover potential.

‘Selfless’, and its follow-up, ‘Songs of Love and Hate’, have rather unfairly gone down as the most inessential records in Godflesh’s discography. The latter saw Primus drummer Bryan Mantia provide studio drums on one of their albums for the first time and, admittedly, it doesn’t sound quite right, but both these records illustrate Broadrick’s continuing development as a songwriter.

‘Selfless’ cut Crush My Soul and ‘Songs of Love and Hate’ closer Frail indicated both the variety of his approach and the increasing tendency of Godflesh to steer away from the all-out ferocity of their earliest material. Going forward, Frail points to the future development of Broadrick’s more reflective and melodic style in Jesu.

‘Hymns’, the band’s 2001 swansong, has gone down as a clear precursor of Jesu, with Broadrick’s oft-discussed love of Hüsker Dü perhaps making an important point of comparison. But its predecessor, ‘Us and Them’, released two years earlier, was perhaps Godflesh’s most radical effort yet. Dominated by dub and electronica influences to the extent that Broadrick’s guitar takes something of a back seat throughout, it emphasised Godflesh’s continued evolution over the years, further proving that Broadrick and Green were not content to rest on their laurels, despite already being acknowledged as two of the premier innovators in the world of underground music.

‘Hymns’, in contrast, was clearly built upon all of the band’s prior achievements. The heaviness of their debut, the melodicism that had slowly crept in and the electronic experimentation that had always fascinated both Broadrick and Green all had crucial roles to play (as did the excellent drumming of ex-Swans man Ted Parsons).

That it was the last Godflesh record was largely down to Green. His departure from the band triggered a series of events that ended with Broadrick spiralling into a breakdown on the eve of a US tour in 2002, following attempts to keep Godflesh alive through performances alongside sometime Killing Joke/Ministry/Prong bassist Paul Raven.

Jesu would be Broadrick’s main musical vehicle for the next seven years, although he continued to record as part of many other projects as well as engaging in numerous solo activities. Green would not be heard from again musically until Godflesh’s reformation, which surprised many when announced in 2009.

That they have taken their time with ‘World Lit Only By Fire’ bodes well for what will be the seventh Godflesh album, but the pressure is immense. Godflesh have always blown away fans will their willingness to think outside the box as much as their ability to play astonishingly heavy music, but one senses that Broadrick and Green will use this opportunity to assert the latter aspect of the band more than ever. It’s 2014. The world is still shit, and Godflesh are going to be heavier than ever. All may not be well but if any band can help project your anger…

‘Decline and Fall’ is out now via Avalanche Recordings and will be reviewed later this month in the Noise Not Music column. ‘World Lit Only by Fire’ will be released later this year, while you can peruse 15 essential Godflesh tracks in this handy Spotify playlist.

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