Selfless

Selfless was the first Godflesh album I got. Not in the sense of having owned but in the sense of having understood. I had purchased the Merciless and Cold World EPs prior to Selfless but they had left me alienated and afraid. Selfless finds the band expansive, slightly more accessible, with riffs that are more easily understood. It is by no means the strongest Godflesh release but I still listen to it frequently and think it slightly misunderstood. Having been released on the heels of the Earache/Columbia deal, there were cries of "sell-out" over the minimalist approach taken. This certainly isn't the harsh, dense, claustrophobic experience that is Streetcleaner -- the band is slowly moving away from that aesthetic. But what is here certainly isn't any kind of gussied up or pretty music. The backbone is still Godflesh: heavy, mysterious, slightly impenetrable.

"Xnoybis" starts things on an interesting tip. The main riff is heavy with a nice marching drum pattern but the vocals are opaque, cloudy even. The affected melancholy comes from clean singing through effects rather than J.K.'s usual reliance on throaty shouts. Both styles appear throughout but the slightly off-key singing prevails (to the consternation of some but I happen to like the atmosphere attributed). Songs stretch out skeletally with only "Crush My Soul" delivering anything remotely close to the traditional conception of industrial. That song, with its Caustic Window samples and pervading menace of electronics, was a left-swerve lead-off single that made fans think they were getting a different sort of album altogether. "Crush My Soul," along with "Bigot" and "Anything Is Mine," are the only tracks that deeply mine crunching industrial death tones. All three are furious stompers grinding their boots in but the rest of the tracks are more hallucinatory, moody, and borderline ethereal -- you can hear the barest hints of later Jesu. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in "Empyreal," a song so beautiful, almost fragile that it feels at far remove from all such previous entities. Some may call it boring but personally I find it entrancing -- they make sheer heaviness seem almost light to the ear, a tricky task to accomplish.

I love the way these tracks are constructed. The guitar riffs deliver but there is room for more movement. The bass remains anchored, clanky, and rhythmic allowing the drum machine to escape mere metronomic signatures. Everything is tight. Tighter than ever. But also sparse. With crisp, beautiful, room-filling production. That check from Columbia was obviously well-spent. The only downside is the lyrics. Godflesh records always have stupid, pointless, repetitive lyrics. Some are better (more fitting) than others. But this record is not a particular lyric winner.

As there are no two identical Godflesh albums, it's difficult to parse exactly what unifies them. There are similar elements always but progression is key. The band was peaking here but this isn't their peak release. Why that is cannot reasonably articulated or evaluated. This was a momentous album for me personally. I love it and feel connected to it. Accessibility helps me, hinders others. The emotionality helps me, hinders others. It's really up to you. It's worth letting Godflesh crush your soul to make you feel.

Justin Broadrick's labeling of 'Selfless' as Godflesh's 'rock and roll' album is a pretty good example of his weirdly backward views on music. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the man's music; half the time I think he's really a genius who has crafted some of the most enduring music of the past two decades, while other times I think he's an inane little pop-loving sycophant who has stumbled into any and all of the good music he's made, perhaps due to the other musicians he's worked with throughout his career. We have rather differing views on music, probably because Broadrick has never really announced or presented himself as a 'metalhead'. Broadrick views metal from a pop musician's perspective, where 'extremity' is generally based on how ugly and abrasive the sounds of a particular song or artist are, whereas I see it as more of an abstract thing that can be achieved in less obvious ways. So that's probably the reason why he describes this as a rock album; it may be the least abrasive and smoothest of all of Godflesh's works. However, Broadrick doesn't appear to understand that no popular rock music features such foggy, abstract riffing or strange drum programming, but again, he's viewing music in a pretty linear way.

Now it could be said that the general pussing out of Godflesh occurred eight seconds after the release of 'Streetcleaner', which was apparently cathartic enough for Broadrick that he didn't feel the need to make anything nearly as brilliant again, but I'd suggest that this album, 'Selfless', is where you can really draw a direct line from here to Godflesh's sequel project, Jesu. The sound is kinder and gentler to the point where nearly all the 'Streecleaner'-type insane brutality has been stripped away, resulting in an almost shoegazy listen at times. It's not what Jesu became (a heavy pop band); it's more complicated. The riffs are melodic in a sort of diminished way, but nowhere near what would be heard on even the earliest Jesu recordings, and the drum programming, while not punishing like on Godflesh's earlier works, is still similarly scattered and rhythmically atypical. Broadrick's abrasive shouts are still present, of course, but they take a backseat to his angelic clean vocals which I liked a great deal more in Fear Factory.

The thing that handicaps this album is a lack of focus. None of the songs have any real center, though they try to shape one up out of nearly endless repetition of droning riffs and popping drum beats, which is a weirdly clumsy and awkward way to go about things for a Broadrick project. The whole thing is real high on concept but low on execution, like the members had a bunch of great ideas but little or no way of how to implement them. It's as if you went into a restaurant and ordered some great sounding dish, just for them to say "We didn't know how to actually make this into a meal, so here's all the ingredients summarily dumped onto your plate. After all, it's the same thing in the end, isn't it?" It has its moments, admittedly. There are good songs: 'Crush My Soul', 'Empyreal', 'Toll', all pretty cool. They don't feel like anything more significant than a few decent songs though. There's an unusual and unique atmosphere at work that I can't really describe that's kind of cool, and that's probably the best part of this album, in case you ever feel like hearing this atmosphere in particular.

It's not a bad album, but it's sort of aimless and purposeless, and I never really listen to it of my own volition. It's not enjoyable music. It feels like an art installation.

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.

The songs themselves are mostly of the utmost quality, including the obligatory 23-minute-plus track at the end, which is actually my favorite long Godflesh song. Go Spread Your Wings is a modern classic in its own right, an epic journey through the remarkably waste-free sewers of Broadrick’s musical imagination, complete with the pulse-like pounding drums and subtle guitars, reminiscent only in concept to Pure II.

My other favorite song on this is the opener, Xynobis, featuring some beautiful singing and one of the best riffs Godflesh ever wrote, along with savagely heartfelt lyrics. I could listen to this song over and over and over for hours, and I can’t say that for more than 20 songs so far.

A couple of weak spots exist. Anything is Mine drags its ass around like a maggoty corpse pulled by an eight year old girl, and Bigot is uninspired, featuring a really lame riff and some really bad lyrics.

In conclusion, Selfless is a pretty good introduction to the world of Godflesh, though not their best work. I recommend the two-disc Earache reissue, also featuring the Merciless EP, over any other version.

(originally written by myself for metalreviews.com)