LET’S DEBATE ABOUT HOW AWESOME OR NOT-AWESOME NEW GODFLESH WILL BE

I’m an irresponsible jerk who is way behind on my RSS reading, so I didn’t get to The Deciblog’s new interview with one mister Justin Broadrick until today. And fuck me naked with a spoon, because if I had gotten to it sooner, I would have been aware of this part of the chat:

Have you been writing for Godflesh?
JB: Really, really slowly. I guess because I’ve had my son, it’s slowed things down a bit for us. I mean, Ben Green got married last year and he still holds a very good job, so he’s very busy, we’re both very busy but we have a lot of ideas. Also, there’s no way we’d approach a new record just to milk the new-found popularity of Godflesh. I mean, it could take another year before we release something, and even the intitial impact of the reformation could have subsided by then, but that’s kind of meaningless, really, it’s just making another really good, cold and bleak record. And it’s more than in us, it’s in me, it still translates the same emotions that I’ve been struggling with all my life.

And news of new Godflesh is simultaneously profoundly excellent and profoundly anxiety-inducing.

Don’t get me wrong — I love Godflesh, I mean, c’mon, every living thing with ears loves Godflesh — but I ALWAYS have reservations about legendary bands doing reunion albums. Reunion tours? Sure, no problem, play that old shit loud, tug at my nostalgia strings with everything you’ve got. But new albums? Uhhh… scary scary scary.

Why? For the obvious reason: the band now has to live up to its own legacy, and, maybe even worse, the band has to live up to the MEMORY of its own legacy. And that memory, aided by the aforementioned nostalgia, now looms SUPER GIANT GODZILLA VERSUS MOTHRA HUGE in the minds of fans.

Or, put more simply: releasing something satisfactory is gonna be damn near impossible. The band basically has to make the aural equivalent of The Bible, or contend with a whole lotta broken hearts and (possibly very unfair) criticisms.

But I said “damn near impossible” ’cause it’s not “totally impossible.” Alice in Chains just pulled it off a couple of years ago, and, even more surprising, pulled it off despite the fact that Layne Staley is no longer available for recording sessions. Black Gives Way to Blue still does not rank with the AiC’s best Staley-era work (no joke, raise your hand if you’re over the age of twenty-five and have listened to BGWtB more than Dirt), but it is a great fucking record that made even Nervous Nellies and Debbie Downers like me shut the crap up and breathe a big ol’ sigh of relief.

So yeah I’m gonna go pop a couple of Xanax and pray to a deity in which I do not actually believe that any new Godflesh turns out to be nothing but pure greatness. And while I do that, you should def check out the rest of The Deciblog’s interview, because it’s totally great, and then you should share your own thoughts on the possibility of a new Godflesh offering in our comments section below.

-AR