Godflesh, the Brummie industrial band founded by Justin Broadrick, have announced the end of their career as a live act due to their frontman’s ongoing health issues.
Broadrick, 57, recently went through an operation on a hernia which required an incision measuring six inches, leaving him unable to perform live due to his weak abdomen. “Open surgery is absolutely debilitating” as someone with Autism and C-PTSD, the singer said on Instagram. He also added that his abdominal wall “is not going to improve”, making live performance impossible.
The post is striking. It depicts Broadrick in a bed, alone, helping himself to hospital food with a shaved head. Its accompanying description is lengthy and details some of his previous health struggles.
“Godflesh live ended the day of my surgery” announced the vocalist. “If I perform and shout/scream… I am at high risk for more hernias”. However, Broadrick is not done absolutely done with making music. He will be continuing to tour with his less physically demanding projects, Jesu and JK FLESH and has announced the continuation of Godflesh as a studio-only band. “I have been mixing what will be the penultimate Godflesh album… for release on Relapse [records] in hopefully July/Aug” the long tenured singer declared. Broadrick also went on to say that Godflesh will continue to release live material but will not themselves be playing live.
Broadrick’s exceptional career as a frontman has taken different incarnations, growing up in Birmingham’s punk scene and briefly serving as a member of grindcore pioneers Napalm Death, appearing as a vocalist and guitarist on Side A of their 1987 debut ‘Scum’. After leaving the band, he went on to reunify a band he’d been in prior to Napalm, Fall of Because, who renamed themselves Godflesh. Their debut album, ‘Streetcleaner’, released in 1989, helped define industrial metal as the sound that would dominate much of the mainstream metal scene in the 1990s. Having released six albums, the band disbanded in 2002 before a 2010 reunion at Hellfest, releasing three records publicly.
As he stated in the above quote, Broadrick had other projects to his name which tap into different musical styles. Jesu, founded in 2003, trade in shoegaze and drone metal riffs with an eye on poppy gloss, while JK FLESH, Broadrick’s solo output, takes on experimental and electronic sound. His longtime dance project, Final, is spacey and abstract, making music with that project since 1993.
“In the near future, a new solo project will emerge, further expanding parameters of heavy/ugly music”, but without including “shouted vocals”, perhaps so this new project would be better equipped for Broadrick to tour with. No comment has yet been made by Broadrick’s long-serving Godflesh bassist G.C. Green, in the band since its inception in 1982 prior to Broadrick joining.
