Godflesh, Post Self, A review (2017)

Godflesh, Post Self, A review (2017)

By: Erreh Svaia

Rock N Roll Anima

We have been expecting a record like this from Justin K Broadrick and company (actually just GC Green) for a long time ago, Post Self, to be honest is no Streetcleaner or Pure, but it truly backs up the reputation of the band as master innovators of both metal and experimental music, all along Pure Self you can really be assured that Godflesh is back, and better than that, Broadrick is incorporating to the already powerful industrial machine, his musical experience with his other projects like Jesu, Final , Pale Sketcher or the more recent JK Flesh, giving Godflesh not only a fresh breath of contemporary sophistication, but also a very much appreciated dose of diversity, opening track and record´s title Post Self features those great Sabbath inspired riffs along dissonant post punk guitar arrangements, Green´s solid bass work is essential to Godflesh pulverizing march, with Broadrick leads greatly enriching the duo´s sound, an apparent new appreciation for powerful and long lasting grooves and Broadrick´s love for hip hop beats making the grooves even more addictive (just like on the band´s classic Us and Them from 1999),  just check out Parasite monster groove and try to escape from Godflesh´s spell, it’s impossible, just as Green´s and Broadrick´s axes murderously moves in perfect synchrony in a piece that definitely deserves to be heard and respect among ultra-modern metal creators, once again, a totally amazing and heavy love letter from Broadrick to hip hop.

No Body moves again towards hip hop, but the musical arrangements bring back Slavestate to mind, with its tangential use of synths and almost danceable (in a Laibach way) beats, but never letting the metal side of the band get lost, as those Tony Iommy like slow and heavy as hell riffs never let you forget that this is a METAL album, it might be a little distracting the opening beats of Mirror of Finite Light, as they bring to mind Marilyn Manson/Trent Reznor type of musical creations, but it quickly evolves into the gothic/industrial stuff the band came up on the classic Streetcleaner, giving you a small breath in order to dive into the dense Be God, a tune invoking ambient metal at its best, a sort of frontal train crash between Brian Eno and Black Sabbath, if such thing is capable of being conceived, this is Godflesh at its most unique and personal view, the sort of stuff that made them so peculiar and interesting in the first place, following this same path on the even more ambient The Cyclic End, a tune that might not be so much out of place in the Disintegration record by the mighty The Cure.

For Mortality Sorrow, the band moves more into the synth type of sound of Broadrick´s Pale Sketcher project, is more about “pure sound” rather than about noise or heavy riffing, and then on In Your Shadow, the experimentation continues on and on, as the band sounds convinced of keep on moving and making their notorious sound even more interesting and complex, and giving plenty of room for Green´s tortuous bass sound and Broadrick guitar texture experimentations, just in order to deliver the final note with The Infinite End, an admirable sum of all that integrates the Godflesh sound, and what they are capable of doing when focused on the creation of truly innovating and unique music, and that´s exactly the word for Post Self, UNIQUE.