Godflesh

Justin Broadrick is nothing less than visionary. After playing guitar briefly in Napalm Death, he switched horses and took up drums and vocals with Industrial Metal brutalizers Head of David. Then he joined forces with bassist G.C. Green and formed Godflesh, where he continues to twist the contours of Metal into a misshapen Industrial malady. Godflesh brought Metal out of its backward-looking obsessions with fantasy and the occult and propelled it into a dystopian futurism. Streetcleaner (1990) and their 1988 self-titled debut plod along through guitar sludge and tormented wails in a low gear of gnashing beats, demonstrating that synthesizers can be applied for purposes other than corralling disco-goers onto strobing dance floors. Branching out into Dub and complex Jungle rhythms, Broadrick has continued to develop new ways of paring down heavy metal's grandstanding tendencies into a monotonous high tech death march. Also check out Broadrick side projects Ice, Final, and Techno Animal.