As the first of three duos took the stage tonight we were well aware that there was not going to be a whole lot going on to watch in front of us and it was all about the music more than anything. There were going to be plenty of sounds and frequencies to literally bludgeon through us tonight and Khost were going to be the first to twiddle knobs and hit us with their experimental noises. This pair come from Birmingham like the headliners and are on Cold Spring Records so I guessed this was going to be a first interesting encounter with them for me. Godflesh certainly had not played it safe in choosing their support acts and that was good as it’s always appreciated seeing and hearing something a bit different from the norm. It’s an ambient start and then a weighty crush as they hit the riffs. Images on a backdrop are there to co-ordinate with the sounds and vocals also gradually pick up to accommodate them too. Things both soothe and pulsate, audience seem kind of transfixed and rooted to the spot as choral samples speak out and chant away before the next sluggish salvo of riffs chunkily force their way out the speakers. It leaves us in a near trance like state as we surf on the jagged peaks and waves of feedback. There’s a large amount of throbbing noise and there’s plenty of gristle to it all, vocals seem more incidental, occasionally biting in as the cataclysmic clamour picks up. At times there’s a very ethnic vibe sampled through and it jars well with the more tumultuous metallic parts which build up to a seismic quaking pitch. Right who is not deaf yet?
Power Electronics is never going to be everyone’s cuppa bile and Ramleh certainly divided the audience. This lot have been going for donkey’s years and have ties to the likes of Whitehouse and Skullflower and they certainly reminded a fair bit of the former although thankfully were by comparison quite polite with us! Best described as two guys, one guitar that was used intermittently, a big sound bank with one of the duo wearing headphones and twiddling things and the other occasionally yelling at us. It was pretty volatile and in the face, not as confrontational as it could have been but certainly abrasive sonically. The audience was either pushed forward, hugging the bar at the back or had escaped outside to get away from this to the smoking area. Some may have even taken up smoking rather than endure it but personally I really enjoyed the musical masochism and made the most of it as it is not the sort of thing I hear and see very often at all. Blissful to some, torturous to others, there is nothing really in the way of middle ground about this at all. As for the vocals they were pretty much shouted out like a drunk tramp raging at the world. “Please forgive me” were the words and what for I’m not sure. I wonder what the person yelling does in the real world, perhaps a school teacher or a serial killer or even a serial killing school teacher. The mind was kind of running wild here filling in the few gaps left available in the recesses of the head not melting to the audial deluge. There’s not much more to say and indeed the only possible response to being spoken to at the end of this was “pardon.” My ears are still kind of buzzing the next day.
Luckily I am still just about able to hear the industrial wreckage that is thrown at us next by Justin Broadrick and G.C .Green (not forgetting their excellent and wholly reliable drum machine). Godflesh are back in the venue that I saw them at a good twenty or so years ago and they have gathered quite an interesting mix of people, some seeing them for the first time and others who were also no doubt there back before the band combusted in 2002. Of course since reforming they have decided not just to rest on past glories and have recently released brand new album ‘A World Lit Only By Fire’ an album I fully expect to see on many top of the year lists soon. It’s ‘New Dark Ages’ the opening slab from this that they forge into here with shattering, booming drum sound pummelling away and a solid bass and guitar groove shaking the venue foundations. It seems like what everyone’s been waiting for and audience members start kicking off as Broadrick’s raw and rough vocals yell in. He spends most of his time with his neck stretched up to his microphone which is raised above his head level as he strums along on our stage right. With what seems like a void between them Green is way over the other side digging in and plundering away at his bass. The noisiest duo on the planet seem to pretty much fixate on the new album for the first half of the set but it sounds great and there’s little complaining from me. Anyone who is moaning should just have been born a bit earlier so they could have been here first time round. The bouncy grooves on numbers like ‘Carrion’ are great to jump around to and the call of the pit is irresistible.
Naturally there would no doubt have been a lynch mob if they had not gone back and revisited their heady ‘Streecleaner’ era which they do with ‘Christbait Rising’ and the title track. We are transported to the genre defining album once more as the songs surge away in a heaving glorious mass. There is the choice of bowing down to the weighty riffs or joining in the bruising melee in the centre of the venue. Luckily it is not as rammed as I would have expected it to be and there is plenty of room to move and fall around in. We are definitely in the old zone now as ‘Spite’ with its elongated guitar cadence rings out and has us going manic in time to its thumping beat and compelling vocal harmonies. ‘Crush My Soul’ is another welcome addition to the set, rocking, rolling and riding roughshod over us the one disappointment being realisation that it’s the last number. Not quite, we can’t collapse yet as it’s obvious from the crowd reaction that an encore is more than necessary; saving the best to last it’s ‘Like Rats’ which is exactly how we leave the venue in its wake, deaf as posts but happy that Godflesh are just as potent a force as they have ever been.
(Review and photos Pete Woods)
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