Photo by Kim Sølve

Listening to “Master and Slave”, the opening track to Godflesh’s penultimate album, Decay, firmly cements the context of the album title into our vantage point. After releasing nine studios albums, Justin K. Broadrick is planning to wrap up the seminal heavy experimental project which he and creative collaborator B.C. Green formed 38 years ago with this effort and one more album due to the physical strains his style of a scathing, shredded vocal delivery through an electronic industrial metal grind has put on his body throughout the years. The art is now on the brink of becoming a danger to his existence. While its first preview “Living/Ending” tested those limits, this 8-minute listen — a churning collapse of blast beats and steely shards hissing as their surface touches static splatters Broadrick’s voice in the friction. The pair are rendering the deterioration of their flesh and sound through the permanence of recording it, though nothing can guarantee escaping the hands the time.

GODFLESH’s Decay will be released September 25th on Relapse Records.