Godflesh — Hymns

Godflesh, the pioneers of the industrial metal music are back with their sixth full length album in roughly 12 years of innovation. It’s the first time that this UK-based outfit release something on Music For Nations, after the departure from Earache, whom they have worked with since the debut album "Streetcleaner". The story is that Earache ripped them off, and never released the planned "Us And Them In Dub". The release of the Godflesh compilation "In All Languages" only confirms that, containing mostly previously released material and only two real unreleased tracks. Anyway, who are we to judge about this matter? Let’s concentrate on the music instead...

The album takes off quite traditionally sounding. The classic crushing Godflesh riffs will remind you immediately of one of the earlier albums. The only audible difference in Ted Parsons’ (formerly Swans & Prong) drumming, where drum machines were used in the past. Then Justin Broadrick’s vocals come in, painful and desperate then ever before. After three tracks we get "Anthem", for me the first track that stands out from the others. In this track clean vocals are used, and keyboards follow not much later. This is one of the catchiest and best tracks on the album. The songs are quite repetitive and dirty sounding, mainly because the guitars are prominently present in the music. No electronics, drum'n'bass or hip-hop experiments, this is Godflesh sounding like 10 years ago. Only the track "Antihuman" has some electronics in it.

The fact that they do not really sound like a traditional industrial metal band comes clear in "Tyrant", which has a modern intro riff, quite possible featured on a Korn album as well. Clean vocals are used quite a lot in the other 13 tracks (73 minutes), in contrary to the idea I got from the first three tracks. The amazing "Jesu" track is an absolute highlight. This song is performed with such great passion, pain, anger and desperation. Great lyrics, too:

Nature Will Step On You
Nature Will Eat You Up
Nature Don't Care For You
Nature Don't See You

It's only one riff during the whole song, but it sounds great. After a minute of silence a hidden track emerges, a very calm sounding acoustic starting track. It ends in a familiar Godflesh sound, as expected.

"Hymns" is again a great Godflesh album, but if you liked the previous two full lengths, with a lot of experiments, you'll have a rude awakening. "Hymns" is a typical Godflesh album sounding like it could have been released years ago. And that is really the only bad thing about this release.