Godflesh
Godflesh

THE REVIEW

Justin Broadrick is not, and never has been, an idiot.

I'm sure of it.

But put yourself in my shoes: I was born in the '80s, a child of the Milan to Drink (and to screw), and although when this album came out (1988) I was only three years old, it's as if this album already then represented for me, as I imagine for many others, a kind of secret stepfather/guardian, an intimate friend of explosive silences ready to be by my side, intent on lulling me and narrating the future, read with greed and mischief from a foul, obscure sphere. A key moment of the fallen humanoid civilization.

The end of the '80s.

Yes dear readers, when "Avalanche Master Song", the first track, presents itself to me without warning, my mind goes back in time, reminding me that I was born among industries, smoke, smog, and social disaffection, properly packaged and polished like the worst, opaque, war sequins ever conceived. And shivers run down my spine, devastated by "Fordist" drum machines tight as steel nerves. "Veins", Christ, "Veins". This track makes me understand what the '80s really were: a newly weeded prairie ready for the predetermined sowing of the next twenty years. Forced desolation, trotting, pre-apocalyptic. A statement not to wrinkle one's nose at, pronounced with unmatched vehemence, among "delayed" voices within a unique, almost ethereal atmosphere. Then there's "Godhead", and black takes form, life and non-light, advancing slowly, among thoughts and what time has erased forever, expanding between the parietal expanses of the inert brain. "Spinebender", a marvelous metamorphosis, a raw diamond in progress, subtly heard, narrated without shame, in a metrical sob without interruption. Skies and clouds, and cirrocumulus of asbestos, cross the celestial vault, and the spirit, even if polluted, can fly away, with and among them. The cacophonic whistles clarify that "Weak Flesh" is about to pour over me, clog any epidermal pore and abuse my nervous system and all organs, to remind me of the origin of the species and its invisible nature: obsessive, barbaric, and at the same time disbelieving: message received Justin, message received. Just in time actually, to realize I'm strange, as if in the grip of a silent itch that self-initiates under layers and layers of heartrending echo whose name can only be "Ice Nerveshatter". And now I see the world as if I'd never seen it before: helpless cities, where desertification has triumphed over technology, where the remains of men can no longer be perceived, sterilized by who knows what magnetic and/or climatic cataclysm: the earth revolutionizes itself to occlude and eradicate its evil. Man. An animal superior to itself, to the point of surrendering to the non-material technology that I recognize so well in "Wounds", a parable of a silent totalitarian system, seeing in machines the despotic end of a backward species like ours has shown to be, and that reappears here for 13 minutes and 07 seconds in pure stereo-auditory synchronization recited.

And then solemnly, a leap in time of twenty years with "Streetcleaner 2", the last prophecy aimed at implanting in the listener's mind the practices conducive to time travel: a tunnel light-years long, made of basalt mixed with tar fragments, of fossils, human and otherwise, of televisions, radios, holograms, cars, and tanks ripped open by the absence of gravity at "zero time". A voice as a thin strip of stability, offered as a unique foothold, ready to crash against mountain ranges of ultrasounds.

Civilization has been dead for twenty-one years.

I saw it bloodless, more than a corpse, going back in time.

And I thank Justin Broadrick for this, for providing me with actual evidence, unmatched.

Thank you.

(The EP in question is Godflesh's debut into music that leaves a mark, remastered in 2007 by Earache, but produced and released in 1988 by Combat Records. Practically untraceable until that moment, this will mark a clear transition in the minds of Broadrick and company, providing inspiration to surpass past attempts and create new ones. Think of the incomparable and subsequent "Streetcleaner". The magnificent greatness of these tracks lies in the close craftsmanship with which they were conceived, proving to be constant and connected, without causing interruptions, without breaking the listening, on the contrary, forcibly captivated in the strict sense of the term. To you, the wish to find a copy yourself as soon as possible, never to forget to place, for precaution, on your thermo-insulated shelf)