I want you to picture a sound so heavy, so crushing
that it literally feels like the weight of a
collapsing building. Oh, man. Yeah. It's the
late 80s. You're in Birmingham, England. And
this noise, it isn't coming from a massive five
-piece metal band with double -kick drums and
walls of Marshall stacks. Right, which is what
you'd expect. Exactly. It's coming from two skinny
guys and a cheap plastic gray box. It sounds
like a riddle, doesn't it? But you are describing
the birth of Godflesh. And honestly, it's one
of the most significant paradoxes in heavy music
history. It really is, because on paper, this
just shouldn't have worked. You have Justin Broderick
on guitar, and BC Green on bass. And today, they're
widely considered the godfathers of industrial
metal. If you listen to Nine Inch Nails, or Fear
Factory, or even Modern Metallica, you are hearing
Godflesh's DNA. But here is the thing that threw
me for a loop when I was digging into our sources
for this deep dive. Oh, the genre label. Yeah.
They hate the term industrial metal, don't they?
They despise it. And that's really the first
thing we have to untangle today. If you ask Broderick,
he'll tell you God Flesh is a rock band. Or even
a pop band. in a very twisted sense. A very twisted
sense. Very. He claims they were far more influenced
by the cure, killing joke, and early hip hop
than they ever were by the metal scene of the
time. Which sounds insane when you actually listen
to their first record. I mean, it sounds like
a foundry exploding. It does. But I guess that's
the mission for our deep dive today. We've got
a ton of great sources, a detailed history of
the band, their entire discography from 1988
all the way to the present, and some really revealing
interviews about their philosophy. Yeah, the
interviews are fascinating. Right. And we need
to figure out how two guys trying to sound like
The Cure ended up accidentally inventing the
heaviest genre on earth with this unique machine
plus human formula. And maybe more importantly,
why they eventually had to destroy the band to
save it. Because the story of Godflesh isn't
just about music. No, it's not. It's about mental
health, financial ruin, and the really strange
relationship between man and machine. So let's
go right to the scene of the crime. Birmingham.
Late. 1980s. Now I've visited Birmingham recently
and it's a lovely modern city today. Sure. But
the sources paint a very different picture of
the environment Broderick and Green grew up in.
Oh it was a totally different world back then.
You have to understand this was the tail end
of the Thatcher era in the UK. Right. East Birmingham
was this bleak landscape of brutalist concrete
architecture, high unemployment, just, you know,
gray skies everywhere. Classic industrial grimness.
Exactly. Broderick and Green grew up in council
estates, which are basically public housing projects
that were essentially just giant concrete blocks.
I actually saw a quote in the interviews where
Broderick described growing up there as suffocating.
That is the perfect word for it. It wasn't just
depressing. It was genuinely oppressive. You
were surrounded by these massive, unfeeling structures.
And that environment is so crucial to understand.
Because Godflesh didn't write songs about Birmingham.
Their music literally sounded like Birmingham.
Like the sonic equivalent of concrete. Exactly
that. Now, they actually started playing together
way back in 1982, right? But under a different
name. Fall of Because. Right, they were just
kids then. And the name Follow Because comes
from a Killing Joke song, which also references
an Alistair Crowley chapter. Okay, so that gives
you a hint at their early interests. Yeah, post
-punk and the occult. But they couldn't quite
get the sound right until they reformed as Godflesh
in 1988. And even the name Godflesh itself, I
mean, it sounds like a typical death metal band
name at first glance. It does, yeah. But the
meaning behind it from the sources is actually
kind of philosophical. It is really deep. Broderick
explained that God represents something immense,
inconceivable, completely abstract, and flesh
represents the human, the physical, the vulnerable.
So the music is fundamentally about that collision,
the massive weight of the universe just crushing
the fragile human body. Wow. Which perfectly
brings us to the quote unquote third member of
the band. The thing providing all that massive
weight. The machine. The Alesis HR -16 drum machine.
Now I looked up a picture of this thing while
prepping for this deep dive. Yeah. It looks like
a giant gray calculator. or like a weird cash
register. It does not look metal at all. It's
totally not. The Alesis HR16 was actually designed
for pop and hip -hop producers. Really? Yeah.
It has these very clean, snappy, pristine sounds.
If you play it right out of the box, it sounds
like a cheap... 80s dance track. So how on earth
did they get it to sound like a monster? Because
on the albums, those drums sound like literal
cannon fire. Well, this is where the real innovation
happens. They didn't treat the drum machine like
a percussion instrument. They treated it like
an electric guitar. They ran the drum machine
through heavy distortion pedals and giant bass
amplifiers. And then they just cranked the volume
until the speakers were physically tearing. Ah,
so they were essentially abusing the equipment.
completely abusing it. They forced this polite
little pop machine to scream. And because it
was a machine, it didn't get tired. It didn't
lose the beat. It just hammered and hammered
with this terrifying inhuman consistency. And
from the research, that is a key point. Usually,
bands use drum machines because they want to
sound robotic or futuristic like Kraftwerk or
something. Right. But Godflesh used it purely
out of necessity, didn't that? This wasn't a
stylistic choice at first. Broderick had actually
played drums for Napalm Death, the legendary
grindcore band. So he knew how to play fast and
aggressive. He was a real drummer. Yeah. But
when he picked up the guitar to form Godflesh,
the rhythms he heard in his head were just too
weird for a human to play properly. How so? They
were painfully slow, extremely repetitive and
just grinding. A human drummer would naturally
get bored or they would instinctively try to
add a groove or a swing. Oh, to make it more
musical. Right. But Roderick didn't want groove.
He wanted punishment. Man, that limitation really
became their defining signature. So in 1988,
they dropped their self -titled EP. And then
in 1989, we get the landmark debut album, Street
Cleaner. Such a great title. It suggests wiping
humanity right off the pavement. It's terrifying.
Yeah. But looking at the production notes for
Street Cleaner, it's also bizarrely mixed for
the time. The bass is way louder than the guitar.
Yeah, that is the definitive godflesh sound.
AC Green's bass is actually the lead instrument.
It's incredibly guttural, downtuned, and just
dripping with distortion. And what is the guitar
doing then? Broderick's guitar isn't really playing
riffs in the traditional metal sense. He's creating
texture, high -pitched screeching, waves of feedback,
sheer noise. It just floats on top of the bass
like a warning siren over a factory. And the
vocals. Because I struggle to even hear lyrics.
They're buried on purpose. Broderick isn't singing
to the audience. He sounds like he's trapped
inside the mix itself, screaming to get out.
It's incredibly claustrophobic. And I know they
were heavily influenced by film, too, which...
plays into that atmosphere. The cover art for
Street Cleaner is actually a still from the movie
Altered States. The Ken Russell film, yes. They
loved that arthouse horror vibe. And Altered
States is about a guy regressing to a primal,
primitive state inside an isolation tank. That
is so fitting. It really is. That's exactly what
listening to Godflesh feels like. It is isolation
tank music. So Street Cleaner makes huge waves
in the underground. They enter the 90s as this
massive cult phenomenon. And then they released
the album Pure in 1992. Right. Now usually a
heavy band gets faster or maybe more aggressive
on their follow up. How did Godflesh evolve with
Pure? They got colder. If Street Cleaner was
dirty. urban, grime -like mud and rust -pure
with stainless steel. Ooh, I like that comparison.
It was cleaner, way more mechanical, and much
more repetitive. This is where they really laid
the foundation for what we now call post -metal.
There's a track on there, Pier 2, that is literally
just a loop for 20 minutes. It is a total test
of endurance. It hits like a distant cannon over
and over again. Brodrick loops this hip -hop
break beat but slows it down until it sounds
like a death march. It's almost hypnotic when
you listen to it. Very hypnotic. You stop hearing
it as music and start feeling it as a physical
pulse in your chest. But here is where the story
gets really messy. The early 90s were a weird
time in the music industry. Nirvana had just
exploded. Nine Inch Nails was getting huge. The
alternative boom. Right. Suddenly, major labels
are running around frantically looking for the
next big thing in angry, alternative music. And
they look at Godflesh, two guys with a machine,
and they think, dollar signs. Which was a massive
miscalculation on everyone's part. Godflesh actually
signed to Columbia Records for their 1994 album,
Selfless. A major label. Yeah. The label genuinely
thought they had the next nine inch nails on
their hands, but they didn't understand the music.
Trent Reznor writes, pop hooks wrapped in noise.
Godflesh just writes noise wrapped in noise.
I can only imagine the Columbia executives sitting
in a boardroom. utterly confused when they got
those master tapes. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. They
were probably asking, where is the chorus? Why
is this song eight minutes long? Yeah. It was
a commercial disaster. It sold maybe one hundred
and eighty thousand copies, which, you know,
is amazing for an indie punk band. But it's a
total failure for a major label expecting platinum.
But the commercial failure isn't even the worst
part of the 90s era for them. This is where Broderick
says they made it. He calls the mistake. Yes.
the identity crisis. They started hiring human
drummers. This is so fascinating because in almost
any other context, getting a world -class human
drummer is a massive upgrade for a band. Right,
you'd think so. They hired Brian Mantia, who
played with Primus and Guns N' Roses, and later
they got Ted Parsons from Prong. I mean, these
are incredible top tier musicians. So why did
Broderick look back and say it was a mistake?
Because it humanized them too much. When you
have a real drummer, they naturally add swing
and feel to the music. They play slightly ahead
of the beat or slightly behind it. They give
it a groove. Exactly. It gives the music a groove.
But Godflesh was never supposed to groove. It
was always supposed to be a rigid machine. It
lost that uncanny valley effect that made them
so scary. Spot on. With a human drummer, they
just sounded like a really good traditional heavy
metal band. They lost that terrifying alien stiffness
that set them apart from everyone else. Ah, I
see. Broderick later said the music became self
-conscious. They're trying to be a rock band
rather than this bizarre art project from the
Birmingham council estates. And that artistic
identity crisis rapidly spirals into a severe
personal crisis. We get to 2002, they've released
the album Hymns, which features a human drummer,
and suddenly everything just collapses. It happened
so fast. First... B .C. Green quits the band.
Wow. This is the guy who has been by Broderick's
side since they were liverly kids and he calls
him up just two weeks before a major U .S. tour
and says, I'm done. Two weeks. That's not a resignation.
That's pulling the pin on a grenade. He was just
burnt out. He was tired of the music industry
nonsense, the bad contracts, the endless grinding
of touring. He just wanted to go back to university
and live a normal life. So Broderick is completely
alone. But from the sources, he decides to push
forward anyway. He tries to. He calls up Paul
Raven from Killing Joke to step in and play bass.
They have this huge US tour booked with High
on Fire and ISIS. The hype for this tour is very
real. The hype is real, but Broderick's mental
state is completely crumbling behind the scenes.
And this leads to what he notoriously calls his
Brian Wilson moment. Yeah. The part of the story
is physically painful to read about. It's the
day before the tour is supposed to start. He's
supposed to go to the airport. He wakes up, and
he is paralyzed. Just a complete, total nervous
breakdown. Oh, man. He physically cannot get
out of bed to face the tour. The tour driver
pulls up to his house in Birmingham to take him
to the airport. And Broderick, he runs. He hid
from the driver. He literally hid at a friend's
house. He let the phone ring. He let the driver
knock on the door. He just curled up in a ball.
He couldn't do it. And you can't just ghost an
entire day. international tour in the music industry
without massive consequences. Oh, absolutely
not. The financial fallout was immediate and
catastrophic. He had to refund the promoters
out of pocket, pay for the useless flights, pay
the crew who were depending on him. He actually
had to remortgage his house just to cover the
debts. That is brutal. He ended up $35 ,000 in
debt overnight with no band, no label, and no
income. So Godflesh didn't just break up. It
imploded. It was a crater. Yeah. And Broderick
spends the next few years doing a new project
called Jayzoo, which is this really beautiful,
sad, melodic shoegaze music. It feels very much
like therapy music. It absolutely was therapy.
It was him processing the trauma of the breakdown.
And for a long time, everyone, including Broderick
himself, thought Godflesh was dead and buried
forever. But time heals all wounds. And apparently,
crippling credit card debt helps motivate you,
too. Fast forward to 2009. Right. Promoters are
starting to offer insane amounts of money. for
a godflesh reunion. So Broadbrick calls Green,
and Green actually says yes. He does. But, and
this is the crucial part of the whole narrative,
they have a strict condition for coming back.
The condition was very simple. The machine comes
back. No more human drummers? No humans allowed
behind the kit. If they were going to do this
reunion, they had to go back to the original
source, just the two of them, and a laptop functioning
as the drum machine. Wow. They finally realized
that the mistake of the 90s was trying to fix
something that was never broken. The stiffness,
the mechanical rigidity, that was the magic all
along. And you know, usually reunion albums are
terrible. Let's just be honest. Oh, they're usually
just cash grabs. Exactly. But they eventually
release a world lit only by fire in 2014. And
it is ferocious. I mean, it charted in the US,
which was a first for them. It might honestly
be heavier than their early stuff. Broderick
switched to playing an eight -string guitar for
that record. Yeah, tuning it down so unbelievably
low that the strings were practically flapping
off the fretboard. It was minimal, brutal, and
primal. A total return to form. Exactly. It was
the sound of two middle -aged men letting out
20 years of pent -up frustration. The critics
absolutely loved it. And they didn't stop there.
This is what I missed initially before doing
the research. They kept evolving. They didn't
just become a nostalgia act playing the old hits
on the festival circuit. No, not at all. Look
at their 2017 album, Post Self. They pivoted
again. Instead of just relying on heavy riffs,
they brought back the mood and noise aspects
of their sound. Kind of leaning back into their
post -punk roots. Yeah, it's a very atmospheric,
texture -heavy album. Almost like their experimental
work in the 90s, but somehow even darker. And
then as recently as 2023, they dropped the album.
Purge. Purge is fascinating because it's almost
a spiritual successor to the 1992 album Pure.
They brought back those hip hop break beats we
talked about earlier. Right. It has this bouncy
rhythmic quality to it but it's still completely
crushed under that signature heavy distortion.
It shows that they are still actively exploring
that weird intersection of hip hop and extreme
metal even well into their 50s. I want to make
sure we touch on the themes before we wrap up
because we talked a lot about how angry the music
sounds. But Broderick has a really interesting
take on the concept of aggression in their music.
He does. He explicitly compares godflesh to what
he calls macho metal. This is a critical distinction
to make. A lot of traditional metal, if you think
of bands like Manowar or Pantera, is fundamentally
about projecting power. Right. It's very, I am
strong, I am the conqueror. Exactly. It's a celebration
of male ego and dominance. Godflesh is the complete
and total opposite of that. How so? Roderick
says their music is about the feeling of being
crushed and pulverized by the world. It's defensive
aggression. Defensive aggression? Yeah, it's
the sound of a vulnerable person putting up a
massive, noisy shield because they feel like
the world is constantly attacking them. That
makes so much sense. If you grow up in those
suffocating Birmingham council estates, you don't
feel like a conqueror. You feel incredibly small.
Precisely. And honestly, that explains their
constant use of religious imagery, too. All right,
you see crosses burning. churches on the art
track titles like Christ Bait or Hymns. Yeah,
but they aren't a Christian band at all. Broderick
uses that imagery specifically because he finds
it terrifying. It's the literal fear of God.
He describes organized religion as intimidating
and suffocating. Think about the architecture
of a massive Gothic cathedral. It's designed
to make you feel tiny and insignificant. That's
a great point. That is the exact same feeling
he wants the music to evoke in The Listener.
It's not about religious worship, it's about
awe, and it's about terror. So when we look at
their legacy overall, I mean, you can't throw
a rock at a modern metal festival without hitting
a band that owes Godflesh money. It's the classic
Velvet Underground effect. Godflesh didn't sell
millions of records themselves, but it seems
like everyone who bought one went out and started
a band. Totally. Kirk Hammett from Metallica
openly lists them as a favorite. Fear Factory
basically took the Godflesh formula, the machine
drums mixed with heavy staccato guitars, and
just made it slightly more pop friendly. You
hear their influence in Korn, in Faith. No more
Mike Patton actually invited Brodrick to join
Faith No More at one point. I didn't know that.
Yeah. There's a great quote from the website
Metal Sucks that sums it up perfectly. They wrote,
everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Fear Factory
probably owes these dudes a couple of checks.
But Godflesh never really got the stadium checks,
did they? No, they didn't. And Broderick says
he's perfectly fine with that. He said they were
always destined to be a musician's band. Too
uncompromising. Way too uncompromising. If they
had sold out to get those stadium checks, they
would have had to ditch the drum machine way
sooner or start writing traditional choruses,
and they just refused to play that game. It's
a hell of a journey for you to take in. Two kids
in a concrete jungle who couldn't find a drummer
weird enough for their vision, so they just used
a plastic box meant for pop music. They accidentally
invent a massive genre, they try to become rock
stars with human drummers, they lose absolutely
everything, and then they finally find their
redemption by going right back to the box. It
really proves that sometimes limitations are
better than absolute freedom. When they could
do anything, when they could hire procession
drummers and use million -dollar studios, they
lost their way. They lost their identity. But
when they restricted themselves back to just
the machine, they found their soul again. Which
leaves you with a really fascinating thought
to chew on. We are living in the age of AI music
right now. We have digital tools today that are
quote unquote perfect. They're quantized, they're
pitch corrected, they are flawless in every technical
sense. Oh absolutely, everything is perfectly
on the grid. But Godflesh used a primitive clunky
machine to make music that felt incredibly raw,
emotional, and human. It raises a really wild
question. Does the flaw actually make it human?
Exactly. Does a primitive machine struggling
to sound like a monster actually sound more fundamentally
human than a perfect AI trying to sound like
a person? Man, maybe the struggle itself is the
point. Maybe it is. That is definitely something
for you to explore on your own. Thanks for diving
deep into the brutal world of Godflesh with us.
It was a heavy one. Sure was. Go listen to Street
Cleaner, but maybe keep the lights on while you
do. We'll see you next time.