For a band with almost 30 years of history, GODFLESH are everything but prolific. ‘Post Self’ is their eight album and only their third during the new millennium. Despite of that and despite of their somewhat short hiatus (between 2002 and 2010), GODFLESH seem always to be around, grinning and waiting just around the corner, ready to put one on us. One that we will later thank them for.

 

Of course, that has mostly to do with mainman Justin Broadrick’s hyperactive nature. We doubt he eats, drinks or does pretty much anything besides remixing, recording and recording even more. During these 30 years his grand creative potential flourished into dozens of bands and side projects – but it mattered not whether he remixed ISIS, PANTERA and MOGWAI, whether he worked alongside JARBOE, composed some mechanical nightmares stamped with the JK FLESH or experimented wildly with Sun Kil Moon, somewhere in Broadrick’s musical vision we could sense blicks from ‘Streetcleaner’ and ‘Pure’.

 

GODFLESH’s monumental quality is also yet to be matched by anyone – the band’s sound and concept are simply mindcrushing. Despite of his throng of different bands and projects, when it comes to GODFLESH Broadrick is fiercely concentrated, ready to deliver his own brand of bleak, antiutopian, trance-like soundscapes that seem heavier than anything on this planet.

 

Still, GODFLESH are not a conservative bunch. And ‘Post Self’ is just the right piece of evidence – and album that sounds just as expected yet unexpectedly fresh. It’s not a continuation but rather a diversion from its predecessor ‘A World Lit Only by Fire’, a good deal closer both to ‘Us and Them’ and ‘Pure’. A confusing comparison? Not quite.

 

It’s enough to listen to ‘Mortality Sorrow’ featuring Green’s punishing bass, accompanied by a brutal, very much oldschool beat, 90’s synthpop keys and a twisted, robotic vocals. It soon becomes clear – as expected, ‘Post Self’ is worth it.

 

A lot more electronic and industrial than ‘A World Lit Only by Fire’, the new GODFLESH album equals atmosphere, atmosphere and even more atmosphere. Of course, a bunch of tracks are more guitar based and hard hitting (mainly the opening three - ‘Post Self’, ‘Parasite’ and ‘No Body’) but apart from them the album may very well serve as a soundtrack to a sci-fi neo noir flick (could it perhaps befir ‘Blade Runner 2019’?) or just be a vessel for our music-induced Saturday trance.

 

Hypnotic and seemingly straight-forward, ‘Post Self’ is actually complex and textured, a wall of tortured sound to replace this God-awful holiday carols this season.