Growing up an outsider has to be both the greatest gift and the sternest roadblock a person goes through in life. Being isolated and on your own allows introspection and reflection on the outside world, seeking one’s own path beyond what your peers might force you into. It breeds individualism and a motivation to seek out philosophies and political ideas beyond the mainstream narrative of being a cog within larger machines that depend on submission. But there’s also anger and pain, violence and bullying, starvation of the very structures which allow us to grow healthier. The punishment of being different to how others want us to be.
This is where choice comes in: is the outsider’s opposition to the masses a source of creativity, or will it feed the virus of destruction via the very means obstructing freer spirits? This warring of energies is a central factor in music that observes the dichotomies of oppression. Punk, industrial and metal alike confront societal inequalities and cruelty with aggression, violence and searing hate, both rallying cries to war and cathartic vehicles to release euphoria.
Purge – the new album of Birmingham-based duo Godflesh – is a searingly hot product of those incredible forces. A counterpart to 1992’s Pure, it expands on the cold electronic landscapes of that album by ramping up the heaviness considerably, hacking and slashing itself through eight magnificent, pummelling songs. It’s also somewhat personal to vocalist Justin K Broadrick: having recently been diagnosed with autism and PTSD, the former Napalm Death frontman was able to understand that much of his music was utilised as a temporary relief from those stress factors. In a way, this makes Purge pure body-music, existing in constant movement. Where its predecessor, 2017’s Post Self, indulged in colourful industrial ornamentals highlighted by clean production, much of Purge comes across more sludgy, removing all sense of highlights for the cavernous sound of an underground civilisation.
Divided into two parts, the initial impression of the record comes as a strangely groovy update of the duo’s legendary 1989 album Streetcleaner. “Land Lord” hammers away with a merciless drum’n’bass beat, over which Broadrick growls with the might of a 90s videogame demon “CONTROL / DIVIDE / ENSLAVE / DESTROY”. Much of these songs’ lyricism is confined to single words, brief Haiku-like configurations of pure defiance, such as in the metallic Blues “Army of Non”: “SELL ME / TRADE ME / OBJECTIFY / CHAIN ME”.
It’s in the repetition of samples, rumbling bass and fiery guitars where these songs find a constant, an elaborate urge to dance and physically express emotion. Stylistically, this puts it closest to 1996’s Songs of Love and Hate, yet it removes some of that record’s cyberpunk-like dystopian chrome landscapes for something more claustrophobic and ashen, with “Lazarus Leper” and “Nero” feeling like matured variants of the former album’s sound of luciferian trip-hop.
And then there’s the second side to Purge, which – much as on Pure – provides a very different experience. “Permission” bolsters a fast jungle-like beat that would fit on a Ministry track, while Broadrick shifts his voice to a higher register. With the track reflecting on a traumatic experience, there’s also more elaborate lyrics, leading into the grim “The Father”, which continues the Ministry-like delivery. But instead of focusing on the previous dark trenches of bitter interpretation of dance music, here the textures open up to reveal wide landscapes: Broadrick’s echoing voice describes sinister urges of a dystopian destruction, while single synth lines hint at futuristic machine worlds. An impressive track with hints of Killing Joke, “Permission” seems like a short reprieve, but actually marks an evolution of the album into full on sludge.
“Mythology of Self” devolves into a Swans-like chug and would fit onto Cop or Children of God with its grim, pummeling slowness and imposing heaviness and Broadrick growling “HEAVEN / IS WAITING / YOU’RE FULLY / PAID UP / GODS WILL / YOU HAVE DONE / PROMISES / WILL BE KEPT”. It is very Michael Gira indeed, this act of a gigantic and unforgiving priest that rules over his sheep with merciless authority, and incredibly heavy, before finally careening into a final minute of electronic ambience.
This short moment of reprieve leads into the closer and its eight minutes of merciless, grinding guitar orgasm. Fittingly titled “You are the Judge, the Jury, and the Executioner”, the track removes the electronic drums even more, to the point where the beat resolves in a standstill halfway through, leaving the guitars screaming on top of each other. Where Purge‘s first half scores an unholy dance party, its second documents a darkly ritualistic communion of complete soul-breakdown. In the closing words of Broadrick: “THE SANE / THE JUST / THE RIGHTEOUS / WE FALL / WE FALL / AGAIN / AGAIN”.
For some, this might be too harsh, too grim after the somewhat more elaborate industrial tones of Post Self, which provided distance towards the dark heart of the duo’s flailing emotionality thanks to its artistic approach and sound design. It’s also far from Hymns‘ occasional melancholy, which hinted at Broadrick’s later post-shoegaze project Jesu. Yet Purge is also richer in dynamics than the tinny Pure, which feels very much like a document of the early 90s, when metal evolved into more abstract forms and the technology that electronic music was reliant upon was still fairly barebones.
Overall, it’s a wild, violent, voracious record, and one of the group’s best. In its doom-laden and inflammatory gestures, it finds an outlet for the constant anxiety this decade has provided thus far, not so much asking questions than providing a soundtrack for a societal landscape that holds more opportunities than ever before, but cakes them within the constant anxiety that it could all come crashing down any second. In a sense, all of us are now outsiders, helplessly waiting for the next cataclysmic shift, as forces higher than us push is around. It’s on us to decide whether it’s time to obey or push back, and if the price for that is worth the fight.
