Godflesh Face the End on New Album Decay

Godflesh have reached the final stretch. Justin Broadrick and Ben Green will release Decay, the British duo’s first album for Relapse Records and their tenth full-length. The material was carved from the same pandemic-era recording sessions that produced 2023’s Purge.

The record lands after a decisive shift in the band’s working life. In March, Broadrick announced that Godflesh would no longer perform live, citing medical advice tied to decades of extreme vocals and the risk of another abdominal injury. That removes the stage from the equation, but it does not soften the music. Decay is the more caustic sibling to Purge, built around shorter, sharper tracks that hammer at the machine-like rhythms and crushing riffs the duo has refined since 1988.

Early details point to a band testing its own formula rather than repeating it. “Master and Slave” opens with a locked, percussive trance. “Feral Colony” pushes the tempo higher over a boiling groove, while “Living/Ending” pairs barked commands with one of the album’s most direct riff attacks. The lyrics remain as blunt as the sound: “Whoever you side with / They side with lies.”

Because the sessions predate Broadrick’s live announcement, Decay captures Godflesh already working at an extreme. It arrives with a harder context: a band facing its own end on record, not on stage.