Long Live Godflesh!

 

Godflesh was born almost at the same time my musical tastes began to become more peculiar and diverse. I was that weird kid who went crazy over Earache Records cassettes. When others listened to them, the question was always the same: “What is that noise?” I had no answer. I just knew I needed to hear more.

I became obsessed with grindcore. The more extreme, the better. And when I say grindcore, I’m not talking about the brutal hyper-productivity that many associate with the word today. I’m talking about the grindcore that came from England and other corners of the world. Noise, speed, chaos, and pure energy. There were Napalm Death, Carcass, Entombed, Morbid Angel, and Bolt Thrower. Each band had its own sound. Each band inhabited its own universe. There was a scene, yes, but within it every group built a distinct territory. And even within that wild scene, Godflesh was probably the most iconoclastic band of all. They used a drum machine. They used old synthesizers. They were just two musicians.

Hearing the brutal Streetcleaner in 1989 must have felt like hearing the legendary Silver Apples at the end of the sixties or the mind blowing Suicide in the mid-seventies. It was like opening a window to the future. Something so strange that, even with an open mind, it was hard to fully process. The restless Justin K. Broadrick had left Napalm Death, but his mark with them remains forever etched on side one of the legendary Scum. I loved that record madly. I also loved Napalm Death’s early albums. Even Broadrick’s work with Head of David captivated me. But Godflesh was something else. It was something monumental.

Broadrick and G.C. Green took industrial music to an extreme few could have imagined. Green’s bass was a central piece of the band’s sound. A titanic engine that roared at full force and drove every song forward. Added to that were the electronic rhythms Broadrick drew from his love of hip hop. Incredibly, Broadrick’s brutal guitars and his vocals barely functioned as seasoning within that already devastating sonic mechanism. Broadrick was already a huge figure in extreme music when he started Godflesh. He had grown tired of Napalm Death’s absurd speed and wanted to do something different. And he did. Godflesh did everything differently.

If I had to mention a close reference, I might think of Michael Gira’s Swans. But even there the inevitable doubt arises. Not even Gira dared go that far. Someone like Ben Frost is perhaps the one who has best known how to progress from Godflesh’s legacy, although bands like Nine Inch Nails and Fear Factory received far greater recognition. Broadrick blended industrial music, electronics, hip hop, and heavy metal in a way no one had attempted before. All of that turned Godflesh into a monstrous, powerful, and strangely sophisticated machine. Two men operating what seemed like the most advanced war machine in the world of heavy music, with David Lynch as the pilot.

For me, the connection with Broadrick became even more personal because of something unexpected. He wrote on a blog. I also had a blog. We both wrote. We both made music with our guitars accompanied by a drum machine. We both assembled different projects depending on how we felt, and the next day we changed sound and mental state. That way of existing in music, no fixed plan, no obligatory format, was something I recognized as my own.

Yesterday I read that Broadrick had put an end to Godflesh. And then I read something else. In his own words, the doctor who performed surgery on him was the one who really ended Godflesh. What a poetic way to look at life. The fragility of the body closing what no crisis, no contract, and no commercial failure could close before. I can’t precisely explain the admiration and respect I feel for Broadrick. Godflesh had already done it all.

I hope Broadrick recovers. I hope he gets better and stays with us for many more years. He himself has said that the fragility of his body will no longer allow him to withstand the physical brutality that Godflesh demands. If I heard those words from anyone else, I would think it was a tragedy. But when they come from someone with so many creative resources, you understand something else. There are already two finished albums, the final ones from Godflesh, and perhaps Final, White Static Demon, Pale Sketcher, Jesu, and JK Flesh will continue. All extraordinary and peculiar projects that carry his mark.

It doesn’t sound like an ending. It sounds like the beginning of something we still can’t imagine.