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Greymachine, "Disconnected"
This album lives up to the band’s name, being a mechanized, but monochromatic, noisy death machine, hitting menacing metal tinged levels unheard since the end of Godflesh. It focuses on the aggression absent from Broadrick's newer work, and serves as the dark demonic yang to Jesu's pop-tinged yin. It is undeniably the work of Justin Broadrick, but feels more like a collaboration as opposed to a solo project, with the other members bringing their own elements to the table.
Hydra Head (US) /Daymare (JP)
Although it does feel spearheaded by Broadrick, his longtime collaborators Diarmaud Dalton (Godflesh, Jesu) and Dave Cochrane (Head of David, God, Jesu) are present here, as is Hydra Head & Isis leader Aaron Turner. With the exception of its combination of heavy, sludgy elements with lighter, more melodic pastiches, it does bear little resemblance to Jesu. Much of the album is murky, intentionally so, with Broadrick’s drumming and detuned bass assaults from either Dalton or Cochrane dominating the mix, the occasional vocals, usually screamed, by Broadrick and Turner, are low enough to not be a distraction.
The best parallel to draw to this album is a more obscure Broadrick release, and that is the Ghosts album from Techno Animal, though here it is a bit more of an organic sound with less of the jazz trappings that were present on that disc. There are some similarities to the Curse of the Golden Vampire project with Alec Empire as well but this is far more "metal" and less electronic in nature.
Opener "Wolf at the Door" exemplifies this formula: crashing, loose bass thuds, simple but brutal drumming, and buried screams from either or both vocalists, but all lead by a melodic riff that could be leading a much more mellow and peaceful track. "Vultures Descend," which was released as a free download almost a year ago, even tosses out the melodic stuff, but keeps an electronic musical underpinning below the otherwise pure white noise and distorted drumming that make up the track.
There is more variation, and more of a Jesu feel, on both "When Attention Isn’t Enough" and "Wasted," the latter especially being a bit less noise focused and with its rudimentary drums and sludgy guitar and bass feels more like a modernized take on early Head of David, or something that wouldn’t have been too out of place on an earlier Godflesh record. "Just Breathing" also plods along with a traditional Broadrick guitar riff and even solo that could be off the Merciless EP from the mid 1990s.
The closing two tracks go the furthest into left field sonically. "Sweatshop" sounds like an intentionally lo-fi recording of the band rehearsing run through various digital filters, even tossing in a bit of chintzy drum machine before letting the track fall apart into noise akin to the early days of industrial. "Easy Pickings" is similar, but allowing more traditional guitar playing to rise up to the surface, directly contrasting some of the melodic Jesu stuff with pure electronic screech and noise. The Japanese Daymare pressing of this disc adds "We Are All Fucking Liars (Version)", which was the b-side to the limited 12” single of "Vultures Descend" and it takes a drastically different direction from the rest of the album. Filtering the original track occasionally down to just its purest melodic elements alternating with full on distortion and inhuman vocals, and then adding in slow, overdriven noise beats that sound like they’re from a late-period Techno Animal album. The track is not essential by any means and feels substantially different from the rest of the album, but it is interesting to hear such a different take on the material.
Disconnected is definitely a completely different project from Jesu, but it does have that undeniable Justin Broadrick sound to it. Fans from the Godflesh days won’t be shocked at all, but newcomers only familiar with the "lighter" Jesu material probably will not be interested in this. It is a murky, distorted set of songs that closer listening can reveal a greater depth to, even though it lacks the heavy, diverse beauty of Broadrick’s "main" project.
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