Justin Broadrick of Godflesh/Final/Techno Animal recently suffered a nervous breakdown [see April 30], causing him to cancel an entire US tour and ultimately to end Godflesh the band. The following is from an
interview he conducted sometime in the months prior to his breakdown :

“You look at Streetcleaner which is, I think, still one of the most nihilistic albums ever made. You
look at the frame of mind I had then — I was fairly young when we made
that record, 19 or so when we wrote most of that material — and there
is a pure nihilism in there. Totally anti-everything. I couldn’t come to
terms with anything. It was all a struggle, and I just wanted to lash out
at every target I possibly could.

    I’ve
grown up a fair amount since that record and what I can tell is that, like
everyone, I was just searching for some truth, some form of spirituality.
Searching for some answer to that big fucking emptiness that is part of
most people’s lives. For me, it’s a lot of soul-searching stuff, desperately
trying to find something beyond the flesh, beyond just everyday life. The
Soul. Energy. Everything. I’m still not coming up with any answers and
there is that frustration of not coming up with any answers. [Laughs]

    I’ve
always maintained that — for a lot of people and particularly me — music
is just a catalyst. I really do find that it is some form of energy and
I’m just trying to be very pure about it, to not think about anything and
let the music just come out of your soul. You have to try not to force
anything. Using the sort of sounds that we do — the dirt and the filth
of the sound — is really intentional. The whole texture of Godflesh is
premeditated and highly thought about and always has been since day one.
I have always found Godflesh to be a very spiritual sort of thing. Particularly
in a live situation — because, obviously, it is all about volume again
— what I’m looking for is transcendence. Definitely. That’s what I hope
people get from it as well. But not in any dogmatic fashion. The whole
context is free. That’s the sort of energy I draw from music. It’s the
one medium that does transcend everything, and I can really feel like I
can not be “me” anymore through music and really be outside the mere mortal
human being that I am. Godflesh is definitely a way of escaping myself.
Sometimes that is what I’m searching for: going beyond myself. [Laughs]
Particularly myself.

    But it
is not just about escape; it’s about trying to find more, knowing that
there is more. Music of this sort of power — this sort of abstraction
— is a weapon. It’s a vehicle for all these sorts of energies.

What about something like
your really minimal work under the Final moniker?

Final is, for me, just as
emotional as Godflesh, but obviously stripped of virtually everything.
It’s just trying to get down to the sounds you hear everywhere. It’s the
soundtrack to existence, basically — the silences and the spaces between
things. That’s almost what I’m searching for there: super minimal, super
self-exploratory. It’s very personal, but also mood music, you know? It’s
music that can be applied to situations or certain moods.

    This
is why I make so much music, so much different stuff. It reflects my listening
tastes, really. The way I use music for different moods myself is how I
sort of make music. I want to hear things that fit my moods. Everything
I do has that function. Music for me is very functional as well as being
very spiritual and ritualistic. It’s the only sort of magical process that
I can use. I’m an intensely ritualized person anyway. Everything for me
is about ritual. Music has to have the same sort of function.

Do you think the kids
are missing that sort of element in their lives?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I
think people generally do anyway. Or, if they do search for it or find
it, they end up with some sort of shitty religion or something. Essentially
people are sheep; they want something to believe in. And I guess, to some
extent, I do as well. I know ultimately that any sort of truth is in you,
in yourself, as opposed to some great deity. I think people miss spirituality.
I actually detest any sort of organized religion. It has fucked mankind
since way back. Before that, when people were writing on rocks and worshipping
the sun and the moon and the planets, they had it more sorted. I think
people got it then. Once people started to dominate other people, it all
turned to shit.

Looking at any of your
work and the repetitive nature of it — well, what has been classified
as repetitive — the “looped” nature of it, you can see that it is an attempt
to push the listener outside themselves.

That’s it. Most of the music
that I do — and Godflesh being the most important of all that — is extremely
mantra-like. They have that element — almost a meditative element — a
very trance-like element and you either get it or you don’t. I think that
is how you can lose yourself in it. That is what I am looking for. I don’t
really talk in rock and roll terms and I don’t think what I do is rock
and roll no matter how much Godflesh is really just, essentially, a rock
band. It’s not about the celebration of rock and roll. That means nothing
to me. Music is purely a vehicle.

“Rock and roll” is an
entertainment lifestyle.

Yeah, and I think it has
its point and its purpose. It is just not something that I am a part or
that I want to be a part of. What I was saying earlier about people missing
spirituality is that I think they need religion. Without it, they are utterly
lost and would probably end up killing people or killing themselves. I
used to be very anti-control and anti-dictatorship — a very libertarian
sort of attitude — and what I’ve come to realize over the years is that
people need this sort of thing. People are mostly herd-like, and they need
to be filed away into little corners or they’ll just be killing each other.
Before we made Streetcleaner and even when I was in Napalm Death, we had
this notion that we could change the world. This naïve sort of crap.
But with Streetcleaner we sort of went to the other extreme: to the idea
of cleaning the streets of all of us. It was about wiping everything out
and being happy about it. [Laughs]