Decay

Description

"To me, music is rarely finished," declares Justin Broadrick, the mastermind behind GODFLESH, "but it has to reach a point where enough is enough. Creatively, it requires self-discipline. You have to know when to stop." Broadrick is mainly referring to the complex process of writing and arranging songs, but he could just as easily be describing the imminent end of GODFLESH. Just three years after the hypnotic and powerful sound of Purge, 25 years after an uncertain hiatus that nearly spelled the end for the band, and 38 years after the creation of GODFLESH, Broadrick and bassist Ben Green are set to shake the music world with their tenth and penultimate album, Decay, released this year. "Decay was born from the same sessions as Purge," Broadrick says about the six tracks on this new album. "It was an immense pool of songs. I selected the ones that seemed relevant to what I wanted to achieve with Purge, intending to release the tracks that didn't fit for a new album in the year that followed. Unfortunately, two years passed while I was looking for an external label, ultimately not having to self-produce GODFLESH. But finding a stable label took me a lot of time. The recordings were finished, but as often happens, I modified the tracks a lot while listening back." Today, GODFLESH is ready to unveil a series of even bolder and darker sounds with Decay. These songs come shortly after Broadrick's public statement regarding a major abdominal surgery he underwent earlier this year. Fortunately, all the recordings for Decay were completed well before the surgery, including the vocals… even though the endings of a few tracks were recorded with the hernia itself, which was a real ordeal. I already knew that the screams of GODFLESH, so to speak, significantly aggravated the hernia, just like every GODFLESH concert in the period leading up to the surgery, once the hernia appeared. This hernia was mainly due to years and years of screaming within GODFLESH. The album was mixed after the surgery, and even though I was still in pain and felt significant discomfort, fortunately, GODFLESH is generally an expression of my pain, even if it is [usually] mental, philosophical, and existential, whereas this time, it was physical pain. While the middle of the album vibrates with five-minute hate grooves, Broadrick attributes the grim atmosphere of the opening track "Master and Slave" and the crawling closing title "Consume Me" as the true conceptual drive of Decay. "The two tracks that frame Decay are essential in my eyes. They summarize everything, in a way; the album could have been limited to these two tracks – their length represents half of the album!" As the journey of GODFLESH comes to an end…