Ah, Godflesh. It still feels like I should be saying “it’s good to have them back”, even though they’ve been back for nearly a decade, having returned, King Arthur-like, in the hour of England’s greatest need.
Godflesh’s basic sound has changed little since 1989’s Streetcleaner –– it’s always focused around grinding-yet-danceable beats, chugging atonal guitar feedback and the anguished vocals of Mr Broadrick. But amid that basic framework, it turns out there’s a lot of leeway for tinkering, and they’ve spent their career expanding on the concept in enough different ways to always sound fresh. Purge is a typically minimal, brutal and ambiguous title for their latest album, and one letter away from their masterpiece Pure, so hopes are high.
Opener “Nero” is a real statement of intent — a sauntering hip-hop beat, a jaunty looped vocal sample, and then in come the guitars and shit really starts getting fucked up. No disrespect whatsoever to the likes of the mighty Ted Parsons (who played on 2001’s Hymns), but Godflesh need a drum machine to really be Godflesh. It’s an intrinsic part of their sound, like Big Black or The Sisters Of Mercy. Starting off an album with a track called “Nero” is a bold move, because where do you go from there? Nero was a pretty awful dude. Who’s worse? Hypothetical question. Anyway, apropos of nothing, the next track’s called “Land Lord”. But it’s not all frantic stomping. “Lazarus Leper” mixes things up a little with a slower-paced (I mean, not like Godflesh have ever been renowned for being really fast, but it’s all relative), more psychedelically-pitched piece, held together by military snares that still get a bit funky when the drill instructor’s attention is diverted by the monster riffs that are, of course, present and correct.They do speed up quite substantially for “Permission” and “The Father”, with Justin doing his best Jesu vocals (because OBVIOUSLY during that time Godflesh weren’t a thing the notoriously hardworking fella wasn’t just sitting on his laurels, he was reinventing shoegaze for a crueller age) before bringing the tempo (and the vocal pitch) RIGHT down on the nightmarish “Mythology Of Self”.
And they close things out with the eight-minute epic “You Are The Judge The Jury And The Executioner”, the sound of steel sheets dipped in acids both hallucinogenic and corrosive. While not actually sounding like anything off the first Jesu album, it nevertheless seems like the two would play well together, it’s somehow got both Jesu’s sense of open space AND the claustrophobia of top-level Godflesh at the same time, which is kind of a neat trick to pull off. Nine years after their triumphant 2014 return with Decline And Fall and A World Lit Only By Fire, Godflesh still feel reinvigorated by their thirteen-year hiatus, and Purge does little to suggest this is going to change any time soon. More of this please, lads. We sorely fucking need it.-Justin Farrington-
