Godflesh is on a life support machine, and it will be turned off soon. Justin Broadrick announced the immediate retirement of the band in March this year. Shouting into the microphone from the age of eighteen caused a hernia that he noticed in 2024 and had removed in 2026. He can’t jeopardise his health anymore. The hernia was 13cm in length by the time he underwent surgery. Decay is the penultimate album from the industrial metal gods. They took the leftovers from 2023’s Purge LP, expanded them, made them intelligible, gave them a proper mix, and – voila! – here we are. The result is better than the material that emerged from those original recording sessions. There’s another one to follow it.
The song titles tell you what to expect on Decay. After all, this is the band that conjures what raging against a machine feels like for real. Justin Broadrick scrapes his guitar strings as if using a scourer to remove detritus from a dirty pan in opener ‘Master and Slave’. One thing that strikes you within thirty seconds is how evil it sounds in a slow tempo with deadpan vocal pleas and kettle-whistling noises buried in the guitar distortion. You know it’ll stay within the same beat and the same fetid atmosphere for eight minutes and forty-five seconds, and the masochist in you knows you can handle more. You want more. Imagine Pauline Réage’s Story of O set in a boiler room.
If you demand a different form of Godflesh, go to Broadrick’s Jesu project for your avant-garde fix. Godflesh are one of the few bands entitled to make the same record every time. Why? Because they have their own atmospheric sound of despondency that needs no metaphors. ‘Living/Ending’ could be from 1992’s Pure LP, yet it still feels relevant in 2026. A growling bass sets the foundation for the drums to find a pounding groove, revealing the true paradox of this art. You want to move your shoulders and shake your hips, but the hostility of the music is too serious for this type of reaction. Listen to how the chugging guitar riff draws you in like a light glowing from a secluded cabin. You know you shouldn’t approach it, but your curiosity and a nihilistic embrace of danger beckon you.
It should not be forgotten that Swans created this template in 1984 with their Cop album. Killing Joke pioneered the sense of discordance with their 1980 self-titled debut. A title as hard-hitting as ‘Feral Colony’ merges both, but it is Godflesh in its outcome. Neither of the two bands that inspired this sound are metal. The Birmingham boys are. The harsh amp gain and aggressive vocals remind you why their major-label backers of the 1990s were onto a losing formula. How could something like this replicate the commercial success of Nine Inch Nails in 1994? ‘Fear Of Man’ is as unsettling as a flashback from a survivor of ethnic cleansing. It lingers in the listener’s head like a traumatic memory that won’t go away. The ritual repetition and blurred vocal lines stay fixed at a constant level of tension and find no release for the five minutes and twenty-three seconds of its existence. Industrial metal does not look for a release from tension. This resolution would negate its emphasis on alienation and bleak despair. Forget about that luxury.
‘Fodder’ is a menace for sound-checking engineers everywhere. Can the bass operate at this level of ugliness without harming the listeners? The screeching feedback and looping chords offer no respite. The abundance of fuzz combined with metal-bashing rhythms speaks to you in the language of isolation and says, “Where can you go now?” in sordid delight. And then something happens at 02:20. They deliver you from evil with a glimpse of light. The drums get into a faster gear. The stress finds an outlet to breathe. Those beads of sweat on your forehead dissipate. Something similar happens in standout track ‘Consume Me’, where the sample of a neurotic female choir loops in your head as drums and guitars crank up the torture machine. Can you hear the natural harmonic plucking of the electric strings vying for oxygen among this cauldron of heat?
Godflesh don’t write music for you to enjoy, but there’s no doubt it can scar you. The question is whether you’ll accept being branded by a red-hot poker.
Kirk Houghton
Verdict
Release Date: 25/09/2026
Record Label: Relapse Records
Standout tracks: Living/Ending; Fodder; Consume Me
Suggested Further Listening: Swans – Cop (1984), Uniform – American Standard (2024), Sunswarm – Those Who Do Not Build Must Burn (2026)