Justin Broadrick
Justin Karl Michael Broadrick is an English musician, singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead singer and a founding member of the band Godflesh, one of the first bands to combine elements of extreme metal and industrial music. Following Godflesh's initial breakup in 2002, Broadrick formed the band Jesu.
He was briefly in the English grindcore band Napalm Death when he was a teenager in the mid-1980s, writing and recording guitar for their debut album, Scum. Broadrick has also maintained a parallel career as a producer, producing records and remixes for groups such as Pantera, Isis, Mogwai and Hydra Head labelmates Pelican. Since the 1990s he has worked with Kevin Martin as Techno Animal an electronic music project based in a fusion of industrial, dub, ambient and hip hop, which disbanded in 2001 and was reactivated in 2017 under the new name Zonal. Since 2012, he has been releasing hard techno music under the solo moniker JK Flesh. Broadrick has set up record labels such as HeadDirt, Avalanche Recordings, Post Mortem Productions, Lo Fibre and Heartache.
Biography
Childhood and first recordings (1969–1983)
Broadrick was born on 15 August 1969, in a council estate of inner Birmingham. For the first four years of his life, Broadrick was raised by his mother Gabrielle Fern and stepfather Robert Fern in a hippie commune in Shard End. In the late '70s, Broadrick's mother and stepfather were members of Anti-Social, a band infamous for live shows involving blood and faecal matter, as well as for soliciting people to commit suicide via guillotine live on stage. Anti-Social were dubbed "the world's most violent rock group" and released one single, Traffic Lights/Teacher Teacher which is now one of the rarest UK punk record releases. During a period of heroin addiction, Broadrick's biological father was mostly absent from the family home. According to Broadrick, his maternal grandmother from Germany was a practicing white witch with an interest in the occult.By the age of ten, Broadrick was surrounded by the punk-rock that his parents listened to. "There was Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, but it was always the stuff that wasn't so standard that grabbed me. I was always playing things like Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music when I was about eight! Stuff like Can, the weirdest parts of Pink Floyd, Hendrix", says Broadrick. "The first thing I probably heard out of the house, when I was about 11 years old, was Crass", says Broadrick. Shortly after seeing them at his first concert, he recorded his first demo tape at the age of 11. "By the age of 12 I fell into early industrial music, stuff like Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse". Broadrick began to play with his stepfather's guitar, who was then into Roxy Music and Brian Eno.
In 1982, he started publishing tapes with his friend Andy Swan, who had a synthesizer. The first name they went under was Atrocity Exhibition, named after a Joy Division track. Their first recording was titled Live in the Studio and was the first catalogued release on their cassette label Post Mortem Rekordings. Shortly after, the project was named Smear Campaign, after a Nocturnal Emissions track. This was the name they went under at their first live performance on 7 July 1984 in The Mermaid in Birmingham. Promptly after the show they settled on the name Final. Final was then inspired lyrically and musically by acts such as Throbbing Gristle and Maurizio Bianchi. "We were pretty heavily into the whole industrial tape culture and fanzines of the very early '80s", Broadrick says. The project developed to embrace the power electronics subgenre of industrial music in 1983, releasing material by them and other industrial projects on Post Mortem Rekordings such as Family Patrol Group, Mental Health Act, Ashenden, The Grey Wolves, Con-Dom, Death Magazine 52, Fern and Un-Kommuniti. Final went under numerous lineup changes during its lifetime, including musicians like Philip Timms, Daniel Johnson, Paul Neville, Nicholas Bullen, Graham Robertson and Guy Pearce. "I had about 50 Final releases over about a year and a half", he says. Other project names Broadrick recorded under included Last Exit, Crusade and Dead Pulp. Broadrick also had a short-lived progressive punk band called The Blakk Korridor with Diarmuid Dalton and Dan.
Fall of Because and Napalm Death (1984–1986)
In 1984, Broadrick joined the group Fall of Because as a drummer and additional vocalist. The group recorded the Extirpate demo cassette in 1986, which contained a number of songs which were later re-worked as songs for Godflesh. The group disbanded in 1988. The Life Is Easy compilation album of demo and live recordings was released in 1999.Broadrick met Nicholas Bullen in 1985 at the flea market where he met Andy. Broadrick gave Final tapes to Bullen and they recorded some material together. "Then I played him some of the stuff I did with guitar, which he then played to another guy in Napalm Death. Basically, they were impressed with what I was doing with guitar, and so I joined Napalm Death", Broadrick says. Soon Mick Harris joined the lineup and they shifted from anarcho-punk to grindcore. "Nick and I left Napalm Death after we recorded the first side of Scum. I'd had enough of Napalm Death very, very quickly", he says. Lee Dorrian and Jim Whitely joined to replace Bullen and Broadrick. Broadrick gave the first side to Earache Records founder Digby Pearson, who then contacted the new Napalm Death that had recorded the second side.
Head of David and the forming of Godflesh (1987–1990)
The industrial metal band Head of David had played live with Napalm Death before their drummer left and Broadrick was invited to take his place. "I was in Head of David literally six weeks, and we did a John Peel Session for Radio One. That was the first highlight of my life", Broadrick says. He had been writing more brutal songs for the band, but due to artistic differences, he was kicked out in 1988. "When I first got exposed in '89 to the early acid house movement, I was an instant convert. The first time I heard early Aphex Twin, when Digeridoo first came out, I knew that this was where I wanted to go", Broadrick says.He formed Godflesh with his friend B. C. Green. They started with working on existing Fall of Because songs and Broadrick was influenced by the hip-hop sound at the time – artists like Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC. Godflesh released their debut self-titled EP on Swordfish Records and in 1989 Earache Records put out their first album Streetcleaner.
Broadrick met Kevin Martin of the band GOD. Martin had a club in Brixton and he promoted the first Godflesh show in London. Godflesh was met with derision on their first tour.
However, Godflesh was well received in the United States. "To this day, I still sell the majority of my records in America. Of any music I make, it mostly goes to America", Broadrick says.
Broadrick also played guitar for Sweet Tooth with Scott Kiehl and Dave Cochrane, who released the album Soft White Underbelly on Earache Records in 1990. He is credited as co-writer for all songs. The band also contributed "Fat City" to the compilation Grindcrusher – The Ultimate Earache, which was also on Earache Records.