Godflesh
Godflesh are an English industrial metal band from Birmingham, formed in 1988 by Justin Broadrick and B. C. Green. Before forming Godflesh, the pair worked together in Fall of Because, a band that began in 1982 as O.P.D. and helped lay the groundwork for Godflesh’s formation. Through their fusion of hip hop–derived drum programming, metal riffs, and industrial dissonance, later exploring electronic and dub elements, Godflesh developed a sound widely recognized as foundational to industrial metal and post-metal, and influential across experimental and extreme metal.
The band signed to Earache Records in the late 1980s and released their debut album Streetcleaner to contemporary and lasting acclaim. After the release of their sophomore album Pure and their major label debut Selfless, they started experimenting with live drums as well as hip hop and breakbeat sounds. The resulting albums, Songs of Love and Hate and Us and Them, were followed by Hymns, which saw a simplification of the band's style. Shortly after Green's departure in 2002, Broadrick ended Godflesh and pursued various other projects, such as Jesu. Broadrick and Green reformed Godflesh in 2009, releasing A World Lit Only by Fire and Post Self to critical acclaim. Their ninth album, Purge, was released in June 2023.
As pioneers of industrial metal, Godflesh's early sound was defined by harsh machine beats, production-emphasised bass, distorted guitar and sparse vocals delivered in a low, guttural fashion. The band performed for most of their career as a duo with Broadrick and Green playing over preprogrammed percussion, normally to a backdrop of apocalyptic scenery and Christian iconography. Godflesh's music has been regarded as especially heavy and grim, with Streetcleaner being named by several publications as one of the heaviest and greatest metal albums.
History
Formation and early years (1982–1988)
The band that would eventually become Godflesh, O.P.D., formed in 1982 when B. C. Green and Paul Neville, two young musicians living in cheap council estate housing in east Birmingham, started experimenting musically alongside a drum machine. In 1983, the band renamed to Fall of Because, named after a Killing Joke song and a chapter from an Aleister Crowley book. The band found a live drummer, Justin Broadrick, who lived in the same council housing as Green and Neville. Broadrick joined the group in 1984 after organising a concert at The Mermaid in Birmingham. At that show, Fall of Because, Final, and an early incarnation of Napalm Death performed before a crowd of twenty-five people. In the months following that concert, Broadrick joined Napalm Death as a guitarist and Fall of Because as a drummer and altered the latter's sound by introducing albums from Swans, Sonic Youth and Discharge to Green and Neville. Only fifteen at the time, Broadrick said he "usurped" their band.Fall of Because recorded a demo titled Extirpate in 1986, which contained several tracks that would become Godflesh songs. Due to these recordings not being widely available until 1999, they were retrospectively recognised as "eerily" ahead of their time by Exclaim!. Later in 1986, Broadrick was invited to play drums for Head of David, leading to his departure from Napalm Death and soon after from Fall of Because in 1987. Then, in March 1988, he left Head of David for being, according to Broadrick, "too noisy of a drummer", and contacted Green in April to reform Fall of Because as a duo. In that reformation, Broadrick took over on guitar, and the band went back to employing a drum machine for percussion. It was then that the group was renamed Godflesh. Broadrick explained the new name by saying, "I heard someone once say that music is the voice of God. The word 'God' conjures something immense and inconceivable. The 'flesh' part is what effects you on a physical level. Our music is loud and destructive."
Self-titled EP, ''Streetcleaner'' and ''Pure'' (1988–1993)
Inspired by the bleak urban landscape of Birmingham and the extreme music Broadrick introduced to Green, Godflesh took on a distinctly heavier tone than the primarily Cure-influenced Fall of Because. In 1988, the band established a presence in underground music by releasing their self-titled extended play through the Swordfish label. That EP, considered the source of industrial metal alongside Ministry's 1988 studio album The Land of Rape and Honey, combined programmed industrial beats, distorted vocals, low guitar and driving bass riffs to create the sound that Godflesh would become known for.Shortly after the Godflesh release, the band recorded another EP titled Tiny Tears comprising four short, rough songs. Before Swordfish could release this EP, though, Godflesh were acquired by Earache Records, and the label's founder, Digby Pearson, convinced Broadrick and Green to shelve Tiny Tears and use the songs as bonus tracks on their first full-length album. The band agreed, and in 1989 they released Streetcleaner, which went on to receive critical acclaim and recognition as a landmark album in heavy metal music. Streetcleaner saw the reintroduction of Neville into the band, this time as the second guitarist, and it marked the band's first release of many on Earache. The album further defined Godflesh's sound, standing out from other metal releases with unusual production that emphasised mechanical beats and percussive bass over guitar. Streetcleaner is regarded as particularly heavy and bleak.
From February to March 1991, Godflesh were again in the studio, recording the Slavestate EP, which saw the band experimenting with dance and more electronic elements. Later that year in April, Godflesh embarked on their first tour of North America with labelmates Nocturnus and Napalm Death. According to Mike Browning of Nocturnus, most of the shows of the 45-day tour were attended by 200 to 300 people. Godflesh missed the first concert due to permit issues, but they made it to the second date at the L'Amour in Brooklyn. The venue was full, and when Godflesh took the stage, their drum machine failed and the band could not continue. When a replacement machine was eventually found, Broadrick and Green hastily programmed in four songs to be ready for the tour's third show at the Channel in Boston. Despite these initial difficulties, the rest of the tour went well and Godflesh drew surprisingly positive reception. Slavestate was released in July after Grindcrusher had concluded. In August and October 1991, both Broadrick and Green guested on Buried Secrets, an EP by Painkiller.
File:Godflesh Camden 2.jpg|thumb|left|alt=|Godflesh performing at Camden Underworld on 10 October 1991. From left to right: B. C. Green, Justin Broadrick, Robert Hampson and Mick Harris
With the successes of Streetcleaner, Slavestate, a concert opening for Nirvana and the Grindcrusher tour, Godflesh started on their second album, this time without Neville, who chose to focus on his other project, Cable Regime, which featured Broadrick as a recurring producer. To fill the void, Robert Hampson of Loop was brought in to play on half of the new album's tracks as well as on Cold World, an EP recorded in the same sessions. The sophomore album, Pure, was released in 1992 through Earache and has since been recognised as an influential release in the post-metal genre. Musically, Pure was even more mechanical than Streetcleaner, further emphasising the drum machine and featuring production that augmented the percussion with a stark, bleak atmosphere. Though Godflesh's most overt experiments with hip hop and breakbeats occurred later in their career, Pure featured elements of both buried under the wailing guitar, shouted vocals and aggressively repetitive drumming. The album continued its experimentation with atypical song structures on its conclusion, "Pure II", a twenty-minute ambient drone piece with a submerged beat that, as AllMusic's Ned Raggett said, "hits like a distant cannon".
Despite Broadrick's dissatisfaction with the mixing on Pure being "not heavy enough", many critics regarded the album as unrelenting; in a positive review, Spin Mike Gitter wrote that "Hiroshima was probably more fun ". In support of the album, Godflesh planned to open for Ministry on another tour of North America, but instead ended up opening for the electro-industrial band Skinny Puppy on their Last Rights tour. Due again to issues with entering the United States, Godflesh were forced to cancel a number of these dates; they later returned to those markets as headliners to make the missed shows up. Broadrick retrospectively said that this era of the band stands as "the most honest representation of what Godflesh set out to achieve."
''Selfless'', ''Songs of Love and Hate'' and ''Us and Them'' (1994–2000)
After a year of minimal activity in 1993, Godflesh were approached by several record labels. According to Broadrick, Danny Goldberg of Atlantic Records invited them to London and expressed his desire to acquire the band. About this period, Broadrick said, "They really thought that Godflesh could be the next Nine Inch Nails and that we would be selling out fucking stadiums. The buzz at the time was ridiculous. It outweighed the sales, obviously. It was all hype." Ultimately, the band ended up with major record label Columbia for the release of the EP Merciless in 1994, the title track of which was originally a Fall of Because song. Another EP, Messiah was recorded during these sessions, but it was not released on a wide scale until 2003 through Relapse Records. Later in 1994, the band released their third album, Selfless, which represented a shift in the group to a more high-end production approach and to a greater focus on traditional heavy metal riffs. Despite being the band's best-selling record with approximately 180,000 copies shipped, Selfless was deemed a commercial disappointment. This coupled with the ban of Godflesh's first major music video led to the end of their collaboration with Columbia.Feeling abandoned after being abruptly dropped by Columbia, Godflesh were briefly directionless in 1995. In 1996, the band returned to Earache and created their fourth studio album, Songs of Love and Hate, which was Godflesh's first music made with a human drummer since the early Fall of Because days; Bryan Mantia of Praxis provided the aggressive, non-mechanical drumming. In retrospect, Broadrick believed Songs of Love and Hate marked the point where Godflesh lost sight of their original goal and started making "self-conscious" music. When it came time for the album's 1996 tour, Mantia made the move to join Primus, and Godflesh recruited Ted Parsons of Prong and Swans to perform on the tour in his place. Along with the album's follow-up remix release, Love and Hate in Dub, Songs of Love and Hate moved away from Godflesh's industrial roots into experimentation with conventional verse-chorus format, hip hop, dub and drum and bass. The remix album was supported by a one-off concert on 4 October 1997 at The Garage, London where Broadrick operated a mixing desk, Steve Hough played guitar, Green played bass and Diarmuid Dalton provided support on a Moog synthesiser.
This experimentation continued and increased with Godflesh's next album, Us and Them. While live drumming was dropped again in favour of percussive machines, Us and Them saw the group going further with electronics and drum-and-bass-oriented sound than ever before. Broadrick was quick to admit that he "hated" the album and that it was an "identity crisis". Retrospectively, though, he revised his thoughts, saying that his hatred was overstated despite him still having issues with the album. Shortly after releasing Us and Them in 1999, Godflesh began work on a proposed remix album, Us and Them in Dub. While this album was never released, two tracks from it appeared on the 2001 compilation In All Languages. Also in 1999, Life Is Easy, an album compiling Godflesh's recordings as Fall of Because, was released on the Alleysweeper label and distributed via Martin Atkins' Invisible Records label.