{"id":878830,"date":"2026-09-03T19:56:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T19:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/878830\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T19:56:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T19:56:20","slug":"i-want-to-go-further-justin-broadrick-on-retiring-godflesh-playing-with-phoebe-bridgers-and-his-new-band-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/878830\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I want to go further\u2019: Justin Broadrick on retiring Godflesh, playing with Phoebe Bridgers \u2013 and his new band | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 4 October 2024, Justin Broadrick felt a pop. The singer and guitarist of pioneering industrial metal duo Godflesh had felt pain in his groin for several years. After a coughing fit following a show in Sofia, Bulgaria, he knew he had a hernia. \u201cIt was a small knob in my groin,\u201d says Broadrick. \u201cI got back home and told my partner, and she was like, \u2018Let\u2019s watch how it goes.\u2019\u201d He continued to perform live for another year, wearing up to two hernia belts at a time. By the time he got it surgically treated in February this year, it was 13cm long.<\/p>\n

The next month, Broadrick shared a picture of himself in hospital and announced that Godflesh\u2019s near-four-decade career will soon end. His condition had been caused by the physicality of shouting over their music since he was 18; he just turned 57. If he were to do so again, he would risk blowing out his abdominal wall entirely. There will be two more studio albums \u2013 starting with this autumn\u2019s reliably crushing Decay, recorded pre-surgery \u2013 and possibly some archival releases and remixes. But beyond that? Nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still in a lot of discomfort, even now,\u201d says Broadrick, talking to me by phone in mid-August. \u201cI\u2019m not the toughest guy in the world, I\u2019m very sensitive to pain, so it\u2019s going to be nine to 12 months [after surgery] before potentially feeling no negative sensations whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Godflesh: Living\/Ending \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Broadrick received support from all over the heavy metal world, including current or former members of Megadeth, Slipknot, Fear Factory, Neurosis, Sunn O))) and Killing Joke. It was just a small glimpse of the impact Godflesh have made. When Broadrick and bassist Ben \u201cGC\u201d Green formed the band in 1988, their cacophonous beats, programmed on a \u00a3500 drum machine, were unprecedented in the genre. Broadrick\u2019s riffs were immediate, dense and unsettling. From top to bottom, they were the heaviest band ever.<\/p>\n

Metallica were fans: guitarist Kirk Hammett got Andres Serrano to design their Load and Reload album covers after Broadrick showed him a Godflesh video directed by the provocative artist. Mike Patton praised them as \u201cridiculously heavy\u201d and invited Broadrick to audition for Faith No More in 1993. He turned the offer down. \u201cThere\u2019s no way I can join someone else\u2019s band,\u201d he reasons today. And many of nu metal\u2019s frontrunners idolised Godflesh. Founding Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison once blared their music during an interview at his house; when Broadrick first heard Korn\u2019s debut single Blind, he thought: \u201cI quite like it, but it sounds like Godflesh meets Faith No More.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Among the distress [of touring] and the feeling of wanting to kill everyone, there is transcendence\u2019 \u2026 Broadrick and Green in 1992. Photograph: Johnny Greig\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Despite his widespread influence, Broadrick eschews the limelight. Born in Birmingham, he now lives with his partner, 15-year-old son and many, many pets in a north Wales village so remote that it doesn\u2019t have as much as a pub. He avoids social situations, rarely granting interviews, but gives long, sometimes meandering answers. He says that these are symptoms of his autism, which went undiagnosed until 2022, when he was in his early 50s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m generalising, but the psychiatrist pretty much said to me that there are two types of autistic people,\u201d he explains in his undiluted Brummie accent. \u201cA lot of people who used to get diagnosed with Asperger\u2019s generally have the cold, don\u2019t speak, sit-in-a-corner type of autism. My autism is the other one, where, they said, people can get hyperemotional and hypersensitive and talk all the time, trying to get themselves understood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Broadrick\u2019s hypersensitivity shaped Godflesh\u2019s music. Their beats echo the clanging he heard from nearby factories while growing up on a council estate, and his anguished shouts and misanthropic lyrics are rooted in childhood trauma. His mum and stepdad were punk musicians who hosted wild parties with drugs and alcohol while he was home. \u201cI was exposed to all manner of shit,\u201d he says, \u201cbut at school, I was totally isolated. I couldn\u2019t communicate with kids. I was virtually mute. Two very different, polarising existences there. As soon as I became obsessive about music at the age of eight, that\u2019s all I could communicate about.\u201d<\/p>\n

He began making music under the pseudonym Final when he was 13. At 15, he walked out of his first exam and never went back to school. After meeting Nicholas Bullen of West Midlands grindcore agitators Napalm Death at a market, he joined the band and wrote \u201c90%\u201d of the music on side A of their debut album, Scum. It became a cult classic, inspiring a legion of copycats. The 1.3-second track You Suffer holds the Guinness world record for the shortest song ever recorded.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Godflesh: Crush My Soul \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Come the release of Scum in 1987, however, Broadrick had already grown bored and left. \u201cI love what we created, but I felt restricted. We said, \u2018Let\u2019s play as fast as we can.\u2019 I remember saying to [drummer] Mick Harris, \u2018Faster! Faster!\u2019, and he was laughing, and we just got faster and faster. It was very momentary \u2013 very temporary, almost.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1988, Broadrick and Green, who grew up on the same estate, started Godflesh. They were both signing on at the time, and talked Green\u2019s mum into taking out a bank loan to cover that \u00a3500 drum machine. Their formula of playing distorted guitar over huge beats was inspired by Run-DMC\u2019s single King of Rock, which Broadrick heard on The Old Grey Whistle Test. The angular riffs were pulled from Killing Joke, while the discordance and rhythmic vocal patterns evoked early Swans. That unique blend resonated widely, getting the pair off the dole \u201crelatively quickly\u201d. Their 1989 debut album, Streetcleaner, was released by popular death metal label Earache (then also home to Napalm). After initially only reaching No 19 on the UK indie chart, it became a sleeper hit and seminal release.<\/p>\n

Godflesh proved especially popular in the US, where they scored their breakthrough by supporting Napalm in 1991. However, the tour triggered Broadrick\u2019s hypersensitivity. From his first gig, he had used drink or substances to cope with the sensory overload of performing. Still, he had to play. Music is the only job he\u2019s ever had, and, \u201camong the distress and the feeling of wanting to fucking kill everyone, there is transcendence\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hated the overwhelm, everything about it. Two-and-a-half months, that fucking tour! I spent two-and-a-half months trying to get off,\u201d he admits. \u201cBut here\u2019s the thing: you could tell we were being exposed to a metal audience that had never experienced anything like us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Banned \u2026 Broadrick on the set of the video for Crush My Soul in 1994. Photograph: Karjean Levine\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Thanks to a deal by Earache, Sony-backed juggernaut Columbia Records agreed to distribute Godflesh\u2019s 1994 album Selfless in the US. But then MTV banned the Serrano-directed Crush My Soul video \u2013 not only did it contain religious imagery and end with red liquid being poured on to Broadrick, but the artist had previously flared tempers with his 1987 photograph Piss Christ<\/a>, which depicted a crucifix submerged in urine. Broadrick believes that the rise of nu metal not long after Selfless \u201cburied\u201d Godflesh: \u201cLabels that wanted to sign Godflesh two years before were not interested any more. They just wanted anyone who sounded like Korn or Slipknot.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also expresses his frustration over certain high-profile artists not acknowledging him. He claimed in a 90s interview that Metallica\u2019s Hammett never publicly gave him the credit for introducing him to Serrano\u2019s work. \u201cKirk promptly fell out with me and got friends of his to write me nasty letters and shit,\u201d he alleges today. \u201cThat was the end of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Were you ever able to mend that relationship? \u201cEventually, he admitted that it was taken from the influence of Godflesh. It\u2019s now public knowledge that it was inspired by a Godflesh video, but he didn\u2019t say that for many, many years. And I got made the bad guy for daring to suggest that that concept was taken from the band. I\u2019m pretty upset now, to be honest, that people turned on me about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Godflesh suffered another, ultimately fatal blow when Green left in 2001, two weeks before a tour. After rushing to replace his longtime partner and once again hitting the road, Broadrick collapsed. He ended Godflesh in April 2002, ahead of a scheduled North American run, and put together a new shoegaze project, Jesu.<\/p>\n

More ambient and melodic than Godflesh, Jesu broadened Broadrick\u2019s influence. He remixed Julien Baker\u2019s song Favor<\/a> in 2021. Baker\u2019s Boygenius bandmate Phoebe Bridgers did backing vocals. Recently, Bridgers emailed Broadrick about doing some \u201cJesu-style stuff\u201d on her chart-topping new album, Lost Weekend<\/a>. \u201cI thought I was being scammed,\u201d he admits, but he played guitar on the tracks Bobby and Best Dressed.<\/p>\n

Was it intimidating, collaborating with a pop star? \u201cThe fact that she was so personable and we were immediate friends was brilliant for me, but I was overwhelmed by how big she is. I was literally sending music to Taylor Swift\u2019s personal engineer! I\u2019m catapulted into this huge, mainstream world, and I\u2019m like, \u2018How the fuck am I here?!\u2019\u201d They\u2019re still working together, as recently as three weeks before we speak. \u201cShe wanted me to play guitar and bass on a song for a film. She said to me a few months ago, \u2018I\u2019m just going to keep hitting you up.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It will always be a beacon\u2019 \u2026 Broadrick playing in Norway in 2023. Photograph: Gonzales Photo\/Alamy<\/p>\n

After performing across Europe and North America as Jesu in 2007, Broadrick quit drink and drugs and gave up touring. \u201cI ended up drinking a bottle of Jack Daniel\u2019s every night,\u201d he says. \u201cTotal self-destruction. I was killing myself, so I had to address it. I had to stop touring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years later, craving a heavier counterpart to Jesu, he restarted Godflesh with Green. They\u2019ve experimented plenty since the early days: they\u2019ve done dub remixes, some of their later beats took from hip-hop and breakbeat, and new album Decay contains two of their longest, most claustrophobic compositions in Master and Slave and Consume Me.<\/p>\n

But Broadrick feels trapped by the band\u2019s framework. His hernia didn\u2019t cause their impending split as much as confirm it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Godflesh template has become dated to me,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s very 80s and 90s, like a noise rock band. For want of a better analogy, it\u2019s very meat and potatoes. I always wanted to go much further than that. You can step outside the template, but it won\u2019t be Godflesh any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hopes to record Godflesh\u2019s final album, aptly entitled The End, in November and December and release it as soon as possible. It\u2019ll feature vocals, but they\u2019ll be higher-pitched screams and spoken-word sections that he can handle safely. He reveals that the music will mark a \u201csideways step\u201d for the band, as he plans to use a guitar with a tremolo arm: something Godflesh haven\u2019t touched since their debut album.<\/p>\n

After Godflesh are put to bed, Broadrick, as well as continuing with Jesu and his electronic solo project JK Flesh, will form a new \u201cbrutal, industrial, heavy\u201d solo band called White Light District. There\u2019ll be sampled percussion and electronic textures. Live, he\u2019ll be joined by a session drummer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t dare call it a Godflesh replacement,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause it\u2019s heavy, ugly music, people may venture that it is, but it will be less rock based. It\u2019s not confined by that instrumentation. It will sound like Glenn Branca with metal guitars, except it\u2019s not metal: 15 layers of guitar that create this ultra-cluster of fucking hallucinatory dissonance, which could not be created by a band.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he readies The End and this new pursuit, Broadrick admits that Godflesh\u2019s retirement hasn\u2019t sunk in yet. He believes, in a way, that the band will live for ever. \u201cI\u2019m not saying this arrogantly, but I think it will always be a beacon. It was a vehicle for my alien way of writing things, and I will still be writing shit like that. It\u2019s outsider music. It doesn\u2019t belong, and I don\u2019t belong, and I\u2019m happy to not belong. I don\u2019t want to belong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decay is released via Relapse on 25 September<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 4 October 2024, Justin Broadrick felt a pop. The singer and guitarist of pioneering industrial metal duo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-878830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}