Godflesh
Merciless

More rain is on the way this afternoon; gray clouds are already gathering in the sky. It will also be cold next weekend, so say the weather forecasts.

Rain, gray, cold: they remind me of Justin Broadrick and Godflesh, who will keep me icy company for the next half hour. The time it takes to listen to this EP released in 1994 alongside the album "Selfless."

The title itself tells me everything: a ruthless, cruel, suffocating work in its development. With that cut flower on the cover soon to be crushed by the overwhelming shadow. Only four long tracks that pulverize you.

Industrial-Metal with apocalyptic compactness, with instruments engaged in producing cyclopean, circular sounds, repeated endlessly; but there's an important novelty. An element of Techno-Dub is added, albeit still reduced for the moment, which will later become a distinctive trademark of Godflesh for the two concluding albums of the nineties.

I need only mention the track "Merciless," placed in a sadistic manner to open the work, to best illustrate the entire EP. The harsh and detached sound of Justin's guitar; followed by G.C.'s gigantic bass that rages with the same notes throughout the eternal track. The usual drum machine capable of creating artificially heavy and obsessive passages. A track that shocks, annihilates, destroys all resistance; it holds up well against the English band's early works, those more industrial and alienating.

The remaining three songs only magnify that sense of claustrophobia, that oppressive hunger for air: fortunately, there are only about twenty minutes left to listen...BLIND...

Ad Maiora.