godflesh is dead, long live jesu

I really wish I could post something off Jesu's EP, but it's only 2 songs and they're each 20 minutes long. Posting an entire half album on here might be pushing it.

Luckily you can at least stream some samples from the band's site.

Jesu is the current "rock" project of the brilliant, prolific, and diverse Justin Broadrick, replacing Godflesh who dissolved in 2002. Justin played guitar on side one of Napalm Death's first album, the legendary "Scum", which single-handedly spawned the grindcore genre. he played drums for Head of David for a while, then struck out on his own on a dozen or so different projects in different genres from rock/metal/industrial (Godflesh), to techno/drum-n-bass (Techno Animal), ambient (final), hip hop (Ice), and free jazz (Painkiller). Techno Animal is probably his best known project, but to me, Godflesh was the most important.

Godflesh (consisting of Broadrick on guitars, vocals, and drum machine programming and GC Green on bass with occasional extra guitarists and briefly featuring the live drumming of Brain Mantia (of Primus, Praxis, Tom Waits, and Guns n' Roses)) was an early pioneer of the whole loud guitars + electronic drums sound that later turned into the 90's mtv version of "industrial". Godflesh's sound was crushingly heavy and morose. Justin has said that his intentions were to simultaneously hypnotize and crush the listener. It's repetitive and harsh but surprisingly rich upon close listening. There isn't really a name for the emotion that Godflesh songs convey but it's somewhere in the range of severe mind-numbing emotional pain and heartache with overtones of fear, anger, and hopelessness plus the comfort in accepting and embracing the hopelessness.

Us and Them is the title track from an album they put out in 1999. It was a bit of a departure from the usual Godflesh sound, obviously including more of the techno and hip hop influences from Justin's side projects. Some hardcore Godflesh fans didn't really like it for that reason and Justin later called it a mistake, but I still like it a lot and it's probably one of their most accessible albums. Amazon lists it but it looks like it may have fallen out of print.

Godflesh's last album, Hymns was mostly a return the the sparser Godflesh sound, but also featured the song "Anthem" which was surprisingly melodic and is probably the closest song in the Godflesh catalog to the direction of the new Jesu material.

the upcoming full Jesu album which should be coming out sometime early next year will feature a full 3-piece band, but the songs on the Heartache EP were recorded with Justin playing all the instruments.

Heartache has blown me away. it has more of a melodic focus than Godflesh typically did and is downright soothing in places but doesn't really sacrifice any of the heaviness. there are lots of semi-monotone sung vocals with tons of delay and huge, huge walls of layered guitars over fairly simple mechanical beats and even occasional piano and synths. Godflesh never really had any peers but Jesu has moved even further away from the pack. Heartache doesn't appear to be very well distributed outside the UK but you can order it online directly from dry run recordings.