JK Flesh - Posthuman (Techno Animal style return?)

Boomkat gets his name wrong and leaves out his best known band Godflesh, but apparently this is more like the stuff he made with Kevin Martin (The Bug) as Techno Animal mixed with some early Godflesh-isms. Has anyone heard it? The Wire review was very positive as was the rockarolla review. Should we be put off by the words Dubstep or will even Nakh check this out?

Justin Broaderick (Jesu, Palesketcher, Techno Animal, Napalm Death) remerges as JK Flesh for one of his heaviest albums in years. Appearing on 3by3, the label who tasked him with those bloodied remixes of Cloaks, he moves away from the shoegaze visions of last year's brilliant Palesketcher album, and the dramas of Jesu to burrow deep into stark, subterranean Dubstep rhythms mixed with rusted guitar noise and guttural howls. Like his buddy The Bug's brutalised dub, or Distance's axe-wielding halfstep, 'Posthuman' is all about visceral distortion and bruising bass weight, from the quaking kicks and doom riffs of 'Knuckledragger' or 'Idle Hands' to the centripetal pressure of 'Punchdrunk', 'Earthmover's scorched rave force and the desolate zones explored on 'Underfoot'.

oh and wtf is halfstep ?

Pitchfork Review

I'm not much of a metal guy, but that's okay; neither is Justin K. Broadrick. This may seem like a strange thing to say about an early member of UK grindcore legends Napalm Death and a founding member of industrial metal powerhouse Godflesh, but Broadrick, especially in his various side projects with Kevin Martin, has long seemed impatient with orthodox metal, remolding it into jazz, dub, hip-hop, drum'n'bass, ambient music, power electronics, and whatever else strikes his fancy. It sounds like dilettantism, but it's really a constitutional preference for depth and groove instead of height and speed (at least since his frantic days in Napalm Death). Broadrick has taken metal to a lot of different places-- even, some detractors allege, beyond the pale, when he turned it into melodic shoegaze with Jesu.

Those detractors should appreciate the darkness and brutality of Posthuman, released on electronic label 3by3 as JK Flesh, which is being touted as a return to Godflesh form. But the striking resemblance to fashionable bands like Fuck Buttons and Liars? They might appreciate that less. A cratered terrain of heavy basses, guitars, and electronics offset by nervous percussion, Posthuman suggests the smoldering aftermath of a war to extinction. But as metal as that sounds, there are plentiful moments when it's just one notch of irony or ingenuousness away from being Salem or Skrillex, respectively. I have no idea whether or not Broadrick has a certain audience in mind for his music, but the record's sequencing feels like post-dubstep training wheels for wary metal heads.

Posthuman opens with a learning curve: "Knuckledragger" is dominated by a lurking guitar line and infernally garbled vocals; it sounds like metal reduced to a fundamental and abstractly loop-based essence. "Idle Hands" is anchored by charred, concussive chords, but sneaks in scissoring cymbals and bubbling synthesizers that tease some of the dancefloor calamities to come. After the crushing noise rock of "Punchdrunk", the guitar subsides and the machines take over for a full-bore post-dubstep record, rife with sinuous melodies, swerving rhythms, and infallible electronic processes, with the Jesu-like live musicianship of "Walkaway" waiting at the very end like a palate cleanser, or a reward.

While I find the record almost uniformly engaging, it's this middle run of songs where Posthuman really comes to post-life. Broadrick is great at building monumental structures that shudder with the internal pressure of propeller whirs and volatile basses, staggering half-step drums and shuffled double-time hi-hats, juddering ring modulators and arpeggiators, and circularly slithering guitar phrases that breathe out unholy fumes. The run of songs from the intensely body-rocking "Devoured" to the runaway wobble of "Earthmover" is especially gripping; the title track is a machine that manufactures pure violence. Posthuman might not fully win back the crowd that Broadrick alienated with dreamy Jesu, but you can't deny that at least he's back to trying to blacken your eyes rather than put stars in them.

Drowned In Sound

Right, hands up everyone who is a bit bored of Jesu? Thought so. Jesu, Justin K Broadrick’s main musical project of choice seems to have hit something of a brick wall in recent years. He’s refined the process of creating slow-burning, clear-vocalled, soaring shoegaze-metal to such an extent that most of his recent work has felt fairly repetitive and formulaic.

Perhaps recognising this, Broadrick’s latest venture, Posthuman, released as J K Flesh, seems a direct reaction against the purity of the Jesu sound: grimy, dirty and beat driven, it has much more in common with the recently resurrected Godflesh than anything else that Broadrick’s done in years.

Make no mistake though, for better or worse this is not a Godflesh album under a different name (although one is rumoured to be in production). With JK Flesh Broadrick takes the stomp and weight of Godflesh and welds it to his fascination with post-dubstep groove and bass heft. For most of the tracks on Posthuman the straightforward battery and assault of industrial music is replaced by the sinuous grooves and electronic swagger befitting the album’s release on the 3by3 label. The electronica influence on the record rears its head most clearly on the title track: a furiously fast synth line rises and falls from the sonic murk, giving the whole track a sense of hurtling forward momentum.

One area where a Godflesh fan is likely to feel short-changed here is in the vocals. Vocals on Posthuman are pretty much all uniformly buried low in the mix, swathed in distortion and presented as merely another layer of the overall sonic assault. Only very rarely, such as the pleading cries on final track ‘Walk Away’ do the vocals assume a dominant place in the track or hover close to intelligibility. Whilst this uniformity creates an effective and coherent soundworld, you might sometimes wish for the vocals to break through the murk and give you a “They breed… Like rats!” type line to growl along to.

On the positive side though the album is immaculately produced, ‘Devoured’ being a particular case in point: the half-buried fuzzed-out vocals, programmed beats, organic and electronic layers whirl around each other creating a threating and engaging whole. The production is such that it manages to simultaneously sound murky, scuzzy and sinister and at the same time clear and distinct: there are an awful lot of layers here for the audiophile to get his or her teeth into. There is a constant sense of pace and forward momentum on Posthuman. When ‘Devoured’ lets up the assault and leaves the listener floating in feedback it only does so for a few seconds before the percussion kicks back in and the track surges forward again. This is very much a record with all flab trimmed.

Posthuman gives the clear impression of a man on the top of his game. Broadrick is looking back to some of his past triumphs with Godflesh and simultaneously looking to the present and the potential of dubstep inflected electronica. All of which leaves the question: who is this record for? The danger for Broadrick is that it may fall between two stools: too harsh and threateningly ‘metal’ for the dubstep crowd on the 3by3 label; too far removed from the grind and clatter of industrial for his old fanbase. Ultimately though, anyone who has an open minded approach to genre blending will find a lot to love here. If you’ve got a gap in your record collection for a record with the bite and bile of Godflesh and the swing and swagger of dubstep then Posthuman is just the thing to fill it.

JK Flesh 7 / 10

It's on Spotify; just started listening to it now.

Here's the thing: Broadrick used the "JK Flesh" name on a couple of records in the late 90s and early 00s - The Sidewinder and the second Ice album, Bad Blood. And this just sounds like those records to me, albeit with up-to-the-minute bass-frequency technology. It's certainly nothing new from him. And comparisons to dubstep are just lazy attempts to slot him into this year's thing.

is it good so far? I'm going to listen to it after ive had my dinner

I got bored after about 3 tracks and switched over to listen to Enduser.

Isn't halfstep the even-slower version of dubstep? Like, Weakener/Scorn slow.

Anyway would probably rather listen to this than Jesu. The Zwan of JK Flesh.