Decay

On what Godflesh mastermind Justin Broadrick is touting as the band’s penultimate album, Decay captures the industrial metal behemoth in a state of physical and psychological flux. Recorded not long after Broadrick was diagnosed with autism and CPTSD (conditions he’s suffered from since childhood) but before the life-altering abdominal surgery that will force him to change his vocal style on the band’s final release, Decay reckons with the end of the pioneering band Broadrick founded as a teenager in 1988. It’s no surprise, then, that opening crusher “Master and Slave” and “Living/Ending” deal in sadness and rage, while “Fear of Man” is a stark reflection of Broadrick’s life-long anxiety in public spaces. All told, it’s a revealing snapshot of one the UK’s most crucial extreme metal entities.