Godflesh is a very strange band, but a very describable one. Simply enough, think of them as the industrial grindcore version of Burzum.
No, I’m not an idiot; there are reasons for this comparison. Let’s see: compare the guitar styles. Minimalist, hypnotic, and repetitive. Compare the vocals: wholeheartedly honest howls, screams, and yells that sound torn from their very essences. To cleanse, fold, and manipulate quote from another fellow: ‘If madness and desperation had a voice, it would be Varg Vikernes." That’s all well and good, but if despair and inwardly-directed fury had a voice, it would be Justin Broadrick. Compare also the monstrous influence both had on the scene: you can hear Burzum in many of today’s modern black metal recordings, and Godflesh was a huge influence on Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Front Line Assembly, and Fear Factory, to name only a few.
On Selfless, Broadrick pulls off a lot of beautiful singing and some of his trademark howls, some even lacking the gritty distortion effects that his past vocals in albums such as Streetcleaner had.
The production on Selfless is very, very clean and roomy. Broadrick went on to call this his ‘rock n’ roll’ album, and it is certainly an accurate statement. It relies more on guitar riff than guitar tone or feedback experimentation, the standard industrial collage of two-bar riffs repeated ad nauseum used liberally here, though Broadrick seems more content to let the quality of the songwriting speak for itself, and doesn’t bother to speed along at 200 beats per minute like Ministry does, instead allowing the programmed, on-spot beats to unfold around the listener. This is almost like ambient grindcore, if such a thing could possibly exist. The guitar tones are as good as they always are, forgoing the chainsaws of Pure and heading for a fuzzier, more industrialized version, reminiscent of Fear Factory’s tone on Demanufacture. |
