ENCARTE: GODFLESH

O realease é tb histórico e copioso, contido no então póstumo “In All Languages” (2001) e cunhado por um certo Raffi Ouzounian. Transcrevo os parágrafos iniciais:

 

“A USERS MANUAL

‘In All Languages’ – somehow the title of this collection sums up the tenets that Godflesh behold, both today and many years ago when the ball began to roll. Seeking an emotional response from their audience Justin Broadrick and GC Green set out to carve cerebral sculptures of sound that inevitably divided audiences starkly into those that became near obsessives and those that were repelled. The lyrics were almost an afterthought for the listener – you didn’t need to understand them. The sounds contained therein on each record, tape or CD were quite enough to leave an impression of unsuspecting listeners, whether they understood a jot of English or otherwise. In all languages indeed.

That Godflesh have managed to consistently challange themselves and their audience over the course of the past ten years and more without ever slipping into self-parody has been a near trick. It won’t come as any surprise then to learn that their roots are hardly tidy and easily digested – but they are worth recording, here and now, for the sake of posterity.

Surrounded by the music of Brian Eno, The Stranglers and Roxy Music, Justin Broadrick was already playing guitar and drums by the age of 10. Three or four years later, consumed by the advent of punk and the Discovery of the likes of Crass, Discharge and Killing Joke, he had become, by his own admission, ‘… a fully fledged punk rocker with a mohican, bondage trousers and all that shit’. Chancing upon a live bootleg of Throbbing Gristle at a Birmingham market record stall led him into the dank confines of the creeping industrial musics gushing forth from British metropolitan áreas. The likes of SPK, Whitehouse and TG suddenly seemed as relevant and challenging as anything the heavily idealist Crass were up to, as he remembers, ‘I could not believe this wall of noise. It was absolutely incredible totally confrontational, totally non-musical, and there was no moral idealism – the complete opposite to Crass‘.

Realising the possibilities of a short wave radio, a distortion pedal and a simple tape recorder appealed immensely, and along with the obvious three chord trick favoured by punk hands far and wide, the D.I.Y. music ethic was proving attractive to a serching Broadrick. A chance meeting with Nick Bullen, once again at the record stall, eventually led to Broadrick joining Bullen’s band, Napalm Death. From there a Napalm line-up began to solidify as Broadrick, Bullen and original drummer Rat began to rehearse and play local shows. Primitive in the extreme and with limited playing ability the trio were soon digesting the ultra fast hardcore coming over from the States – Siege, D.R.I. and the like – and their future direction had been set. Another random encounter, this time with Mick Harris, Who had turned up at the wrong show, eventually saw him take the drum-stool from the less capable Rat. Breaking out of the rehearsal room the latest Napalm Death line-up began to turn more and more heads as they launched into material so fast it was still unheard of in the U.K. in late 1985...”