Is Godflesh Saying Goodbye On ‘Decay?’

Godflesh is entering its next — and potentially final — phase with Decay, a six-track collection that arrives from the same creative well as 2023’s Purge but pushes Justin K. Broadrick’s industrial metal vision toward an even bleaker horizon. Lead track “Living/Ending” can be sampled below.

The band’s history needs little embellishment: from the genre-warping impact of Streetcleaner through Pure, Hymns, Slavestate and Messiah, Godflesh spent the late ’80s and ’90s making music that seemed to operate by its own physical laws. After a nine-year hiatus, the group returned in 2015 with Decline & Fall, followed by A World Lit Only By Fire and Post Self, only for Broadrick, 56, to step away again when he no longer felt Godflesh was necessary.

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The next incarnation arrived during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, when, as Broadrick puts it, “further fires flared” in his mind. The resulting material became one large pool of songs, with Purge taking the tracks that best suited that record’s purpose and Decay emerging from the remainder.

“Decay was born from the same sessions as Purge,” Broadrick explains. Although the recordings were completed years ago, he continued revisiting and reshaping the material while searching for a label home, ultimately joining forces with Relapse Records. “The recordings were done, but as usual for me, I did change a lot of stuff once I came back to it.”

The album also carries an uncomfortable physical dimension. Broadrick underwent major abdominal surgery earlier this year, although all of Decay’s recordings — including the vocals — were completed beforehand. He notes that the final stages of a couple songs were recorded while he was already dealing with a hernia, a condition he says was largely caused by years of shouting in Godflesh.

The album was mixed after surgery, while Broadrick was still experiencing significant pain. There is, he suggests, an unavoidable connection between the physical reality of that experience and the music itself: Godflesh has always been his vehicle for expressing pain, whether mental, philosophical or existential. Now, though, Broadrick says the physical demands have made continuing Godflesh impossible. “I feel quite lucky, because Godflesh is now physically impossible for me, rendering it useless,” he says. “I now wish to move out of its constraints, move on creatively with heavy/ugly music to new ground.”

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