The post-metal titans have finally returned to pleasure our ears after a two year gap, and boy has it been worth the wait.
A lot can change in two years, and that is by no means different for the main man behind Jesu, Justin K Broadrick. His previous group Godflesh reunited and played countless festivals all over the world, bringing a reunion after eight long years in the wilderness. He became a father for the first time, something which is covered throughout Everyday I Get Closer To The Light From Which I Came. He was also furiously busy with his usual array of remixes, taking time to remix tracks by the likes of Mogwai and Cult of Luna. But all the while he had been working away at the latest collection of songs to be released by Jesu, taking enough time to precisely create something he was happy to air out in the open.
Opener Homesick sounds very much like traditional Jesu. Driven by a guitar sound that fills whatever room you may be in, it’s glorious, epic, and gives you exactly what you want from an album opener. It gets you in the mood, it fills you with excitement, you don’t want it to end. With a delicate keys performance in the middle, it builds you up, and then gets straight back at you with the kind of grunge-esque riff you would expect to have heard in the early 90s, when greasy long hair was all everyone wanted. The beginning of follow up track Comforter would just sound like a load of noises to the average person, but to a fan of music it is the peak of musical quality. The track kicks in around the three minute mark, and Broadrick’s haunting, booming vocals get involved, in an almost dream like environment. They’re reminiscent of what God sounds like in television shows, loud, dominant, with a sense of overwhelming power behind it.
The Great Leveller is where everything else just seems so insignificant though. Seventeen minutes of pure unrivalled joy, taking you on a roller coaster of emotions, leaving you exploring the deepest corners of your mind. With a dark, atmospheric introduction featuring piano and a string orchestra (well, it’s one person, Nicola Manzan, but it sounds like he’s borrowed Sydney Opera House for the song) before a snare rolls in, bringing with it an intricate riff, you just know it’s building up to something that’s just going to blow you away. And then before you know it, the walls are knocked down. Windows are smashed, glasses are shattered and dogs are howling all over the street. It’s as if they need to increase the richter scale for when it kicks in, and then it all calms down again. The strings make their return, although the deep riff remains, making you know the journey is far from over. You’re just in the eye of the storm, and with each passing second, you know it’s getting closer. Then it hits. Pandemonium all over again. There’s a violent thunderstorm somewhere in the world, the clouds crash and the lightning strikes. But it’s beauty at it’s finest.
EIGCTTLFWIC isn’t what you’d normally expect from a Jesu album. There’s the guitar heavy tracks of course, but there’s so much more to it. Listening to the record, if you were unfamiliar with Jesu before you’d be amazed to find out it’s purely one man putting everything together. Broadrick is a modern day music genius, and it’s brilliant to see that becoming a parent has only expanded his already broad (pardon the pun) musical mind. If this is what he’s created on his lonesome, then just imagine what he’s going to be releasing when the new Godflesh record hits stores. It’ll be monumental, and the slap in the face modern music needs.
Check out Homesick below for a taster of just what you can expect when EIGCTTLFWIC is released on 23rd of September.
