About Godflesh
Godflesh are an English industrial metal band from Birmingham. The group formed in 1982 under the original title O.P.D. but did not release any complete music until 1988 when Justin Broadrick and B. C. Green renamed the band and decided to use a drum machine for percussion. Melding heavy metal with industrial music and later with electronic music and dub, Godflesh's sound is widely regarded as a foundational influence on other industrial metal and post-metal acts and as significant to both experimental and extreme metal.
The band signed to Earache Records in the late 1980s and released their debut album Streetcleaner to contemporary and lasting acclaim. After the release of their sophomore album Pure and their major label debut Selfless , they started experimenting with live drums as well as hip hop and breakbeat sounds. The resulting albums, Songs of Love and Hate and Us and Them , were followed by Hymns , which saw a simplification of the band's style. Shortly after Green's departure in 2002, Broadrick ended Godflesh and pursued various other projects, such as Jesu. Broadrick and Green reformed Godflesh in 2009, releasing A World Lit Only by Fire and Post Self to critical acclaim. Their ninth album, Purge, was released in June 2023.
As pioneers of industrial metal, Godflesh's early sound was defined by harsh machine beats, production-emphasised bass, distorted guitar and sparse vocals delivered in a low, guttural fashion. The band performed for most of their career as a duo with Broadrick and Green playing over preprogrammed percussion, normally to a backdrop of apocalyptic scenery and Christian iconography. Godflesh's music has been regarded as especially heavy and grim, with Streetcleaner being named by several publications as one of the heaviest and greatest metal albums.
The band that would eventually become Godflesh, O.P.D. , formed in 1982 when B. C. Green and Paul Neville, two young musicians living in cheap council estate housing in east Birmingham, started experimenting musically alongside a drum machine. Soon in 1983 the band renamed to Fall of Because, named after a Killing Joke song and a chapter from an Aleister Crowley book. Later the band found a live drummer Justin Broadrick, who lived in the same council housing as Green and Neville, and joined the group in 1984 after organising a concert at The Mermaid in Birmingham. At that show, Fall of Because, Final and an early incarnation of Napalm Death performed before a crowd of twenty-five people. In the months following that concert, Broadrick joined Napalm Death as a guitarist and Fall of Because as a drummer and altered the latter's sound by introducing albums from Swans, Sonic Youth and Discharge to Green and Neville. Only fifteen at the time, Broadrick said he "usurped" their band.
Fall of Because recorded a demo titled Extirpate in 1986, which contained several tracks that would become Godflesh songs. Due to these recordings not being widely available until 1999, they were retrospectively recognised as "eerily" ahead of their time by Exclaim!. Later in 1986, Broadrick was invited to play drums for Head of David, leading to his departure from Napalm Death and soon after from Fall of Because in 1987. Then, in March 1988, he left Head of David for being, according to Broadrick, "too noisy of a drummer", and contacted Green in April to reform Fall of Because as a duo. In that reformation, Broadrick took over on guitar, and the band went back to employing a drum machine for percussion. It was then that the group was renamed Godflesh. Broadrick explained the new name by saying, "I heard someone once say that music is the voice of God. The word 'God' conjures something immense and inconceivable. The 'flesh' part is what effects you on a physical level. Our music is loud and destructive."
Inspired by the bleak urban landscape of Birmingham and the extreme music Broadrick introduced to Green, Godflesh took on a distinctly heavier tone than the primarily Cure-influenced Fall of Because. In 1988, the band established a presence in underground music by releasing their self-titled extended play through the Swordfish label. That EP, considered the source of industrial metal alongside Ministry's 1988 studio album The Land of Rape and Honey, combined programmed industrial beats, distorted vocals, low guitar and driving bass riffs to create the sound that Godflesh would become known for.
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