The final Godflesh record is provisionally called The End and will be cut in November and December. The new project, he says, will not be a replacement.
Justin Broadrick has set out how Godflesh will finish, and what he intends to do afterwards.
Speaking to The Guardian in a long interview covering his whole career, the Birmingham musician confirmed that one more studio album will follow Decay, which arrives on September 25. It is provisionally titled The End and is expected to be recorded in November and December.
Broadrick announced in March that Godflesh would stop, after surgery left him unable to perform the way the band’s material demands.
His full statement was:
“I’ve dreaded sharing this news, partly due to the threat of insensitive and/or negative comments, combined simply with the general anxiety of it all, I am also exhausted, but I’ve left comments on.”
“So, 3 weeks ago I had significant open abdominal surgery for a inguinal hernia that was close to an emergency. I am still in shock from the process, and as someone with diagnosed Autism and C-PTSD, open surgery is absolutely debilitating, not that it is easier for anyone of course.”
“I had a huge hernia, and for it to be repaired, I had to endure a 6 inch incision in my groin. This unfortunately was not keyhole surgery. I have a very weak abdominal wall, which at being 57 yrs old this year, is not going to improve.”
“If I continue to perform and shout/scream as I do with Godflesh, then I am at high risk for more hernias, and blowing out my abdominal wall entirely. Godflesh live ended the day of my surgery, and upon the surgeon making this statement. I am now just about walking freely, but with little pace, albeit extremely carefully.”
“The full healing process is approximately 6 months. Fortunately, my other projects do not require screaming/shouting nor a physically demanding performance; jesu and JK FLESH shows remain.”
“I have been mixing, what will be the penultimate Godflesh album – DECAY, for
release on Relapse in hopefully July/Aug, mixes are being completed imminently. The album is basically done. I’ve had the final Godflesh studio album written, for almost a year and half now, that will be recorded and completed late 2026.”
“After that there will continue to be Godflesh dub albums, live albums, and so on,
but no new studio releases nor performances.”
“In the near future, a new solo project will emerge, further exploring the parameters
of heavy/ugly music, featuring my guitars and electronics, and of course vocals, but
NOT shouted vocals!”
“Regarding Godflesh in Athens, Gr, please contact the promotion for details, etc.
There will be an official announcement via my agency/management regarding this
ASAP.”
“Thank you for your understanding. Take care out there. Justin“
That has consequences for the final record. Rather than the growls and bellows the band was built on, Broadrick intends to use higher-pitched screams and spoken-word passages, because the older approach is no longer safe for him.
After The End, there will be no further Godflesh studio albums and no more live shows, though he has said dub versions, live recordings and remix projects will continue.
Decay is the band’s tenth album and their penultimate one. Relapse Records release it on September 25 across six tracks, and it is the first Godflesh record to appear on a label other than Broadrick‘s own Avalanche Recordings since the band returned in 2010.
The songs are not new. They came out of the same sessions as 2023’s Purge, and were meant to follow that album within a year.
“Decay was born from the same sessions as Purge. It was one huge pool of songs. I picked what I felt was appropriate for what I wanted to achieve with Purge, with the intention of releasing the songs that didn’t fit as a new album within a year of Purge being released. Unfortunately, two years passed whilst considering external labels, so that I didn’t have to self-release Godflesh anymore, but it took an awful lot of time to establish a comfortable home for me. The recordings were done, but as usual for me, I did change a lot of stuff once I came back to it,” he said when the album was announced.
He mixed the record after his operation: “The album was mixed post-surgery, and while I was still in some pain and considerable discomfort, but fortunately Godflesh is generally me expressing my pain, albeit [usually] mental, philosophical and existential, whereas this was physical pain.”
On the album itself, he has pointed to its outer edges. “The bookends of Decay are the most important pieces to me. They say it all, so to speak; the album could have been just those two songs alone – the duration of them is half of the total album!”
The first single, “Living/Ending“, is out now.
The new project is a solo band called White Light District, which Broadrick describes as brutal, industrial and heavy, built on sampled percussion and electronics with session drummers used for live work. He was careful about how it should be understood.
“I wouldn’t dare call it a Godflesh replacement. Because it’s heavy, ugly music, people may venture that it is, but it will be less rock based. It’s not confined by that instrumentation. It will sound like Glenn Branca with metal guitars, except it’s not metal: 15 layers of guitar that create this ultra-cluster of f**king hallucinatory dissonance, which could not be created by a band,” he told The Guardian.
The Branca comparison is a pointed one. The late American composer built pieces around massed electric guitars tuned and layered into sheets of harmonic noise, working outside rock structures entirely.
When Broadrick first mentioned the project in March, he flagged the one thing it would not have: vocals, he said, but not shouted ones. That constraint is the same one now shaping the last Godflesh album.
Broadrick has also been working in a considerably different context. He has appeared on two recent Phoebe Bridgers tracks, and says another is coming, this time for a film.
She found him through Jesu, his quieter project, rather than through Godflesh.
He said: “The fact that she was so personable and we were immediate friends was brilliant for me, but I was overwhelmed by how big she is. I was literally sending music to Taylor Swift’s personal engineer! I’m catapulted into this huge, mainstream world, and I’m like, ‘How the f**k am I here?!’”
He added: “She wanted me to play guitar and bass on a song for a film. She said to me a few months ago, ‘I’m just going to keep hitting you up.’”
The Guardian piece runs back through Broadrick‘s beginnings, including his teenage years in the grindcore scene, he played guitar on the first side of Napalm Death‘s Scum before he turned 18, and his account that the arrival of nu-metal in the 1990s closed off Godflesh‘s prospects with labels. He also turned down an audition for Faith No More.
Godflesh formed in 1988 with bassist G.C. Green, and their 1989 debut Streetcleaner became one of the foundational records of industrial metal. Broadrick will continue with Jesu and JK Flesh once the band is finished.
