Justin Broadrick is perhaps best known as a founding member of Napalm Death and the mastermind behind industrial legends Godflesh, whose seminal 1990 album Streetcleaner is generally recognized as the blueprint for a sound later commercialized by Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. With nearly 100 releases to his credit, the insanely prolific Broadrick has performed and recorded under the guises of Head Of David, Final, Ice, Techno Animal, God, just to name a few, collaborated with the likes of John Zorn and remixed scores of bands including Pelican, Isis, Agoraphobic Nosebleed and the Cancer Conspiracy. In the wake of Godflesh’s demise in the spring of 2002, Broadrick took on yet another identity with Jesu.

MAGNET reached Broadrick at his home in Wales to discuss this latest musical incarnation.

What are you up to?
There’s such a huge amount of press interest in Jesu, the most I’ve had in years. I’ve just been doing interviews and trying to get the Jesu touring thing together.

Do you have any other projects spinning right now?
I always have a few things on the go. I’ve been doing a lot of remixing. I’m currently remixing Pelican. A track from Australasia. Prior to that, I remixed Earth. Another band I’ve recently remixed is a Swiss band called Knut. I’ve been getting an awful lot of requests for remixes, but because a lot of people seem interested in Jesu, I’ve been trying to work that. I do another project called Final, which is, for lack of a better word, ambient. I’ve been working on a double CD coming out on Neurot Recordings. I worked on that for probably four years.

I guess it’s no coincidence that the name of the last song on the last Godflesh album became the name of your new band. Was that just a natural transition or is there an overall thematic connection?
Even during the recording of that last Godflesh album, I was already aware of Godflesh’s mortality. Though I enjoyed a good amount of the album, I still felt a bit restricted. I started doing a lot of stuff during the recording of that album where I really trying to get past the limitations of Godflesh, which was self-created. I had this fantasy during the making of the Godflesh album that I had this new band called Jesu. I was writing the song at the time and couldn’t come up with a title so I called that song “Jesu.” It’s weird the way things come around like that. A lot of times I use titles which I could be tempted to use as a band name. Jesu is just one of those loaded, ultra-powerful things, quite like Godflesh in terms of its somewhat ambiguous, but very powerful suggestion of something epic and absorbing and consuming. I couldn’t really resist having something with religious overtones again, because I’m always kind of obsessed with that sort of thing.

As much as Godflesh tackled more universal issues, Jesu is more personal. It almost seems as if there are some relationship songs in there.
That’s very, very true. I started Godflesh when I was about 18. To some extent, I had this naïve rebellion or misguided nihilism. As I’ve matured, I think I’ve gotten past trying to fight the ills of the world. I think things have become a lot more internalized. I think an individual, when they are creating some sort of art, they definitely grow with it. Some of the things I’ve tackled in the past are now redundant to me. Instead of having this worldview, I view things in terms of relationships, which are kind of a microcosm of all things, anyway. But it’s not all so personal. Sometimes, I’m regrettably thinking about the fact that human beings tend to be very easily compartmentalized and even relationships can be a bit trite sometimes. I’ve been thinking about that sort of dilemma for the last few years with breakups and things that you think are infinite that are really quite mortal. So I think it’s me getting used to the fact that everything is quite mortal. All these things caused quite a bit of confusion in my life.

Do you feel more or less cynical as you’ve gotten older?
I think less cynical and a lot more positive about things, even though I’m making possibly the most depressing music I’ve ever made.

Yes, you wouldn’t know it from the lyrics, either.
[Laughs] Exactly. A lot of the Jesu songs were written in the most hyper-sensitive, frail emotional state I could be in. It’s weird, because I can easily go from being ultra-depressed to being the happiest, most bouncing-off-the-wall person you could care to meet. It’s all just extreme. I think I’m one of those people that are just extremely hyper-sensitive and live their whole life by the heart, purely on emotion. I’m incapable of being clinical with things. Godflesh could be so mechanized and clinical sometimes, which is pretty much the opposite of what I am, but would like to be. With Jesu, it’s definitely submitting to being a completely frail, emotionally weak, sometimes emotionally retarded human being. [Laughs]

Lyrics aside, that comes through in the music as well.
That’s something I was definitely trying to convey. It’s extremely personal, but I don’t think it’s so personal that I don’t think anybody can relate to it. I don’t think I am in any way special or go through unique emotions. That’s why I’ve put it into music—to see if people can relate to this, because sometimes I make music in such a vacuum that I have no idea of anybody else’s opinion of what I’m doing at all. Obviously it’s extremely self-indulgent to do that, but sometimes some of the best art is born from that pure self-indulgence. Taking your moods and trying to make music out of what hits you the hardest.

You’re extremely prolific. What drives you?
Virtually since the age of five when I started bashing away at my mom and stepfather’s records and already pretending I was in a band when I was six, it was obvious to anyone around that I had to make music. It seems absolutely essential to me. There’s not much drive besides that sense of creativity. I’m so immersed in it, it’s really hard for me to articulate the necessity of me doing this. Outside of any form of so-called success for any music I create, I would still do it regardless. I definitely use music as a therapy. Playing it and making it I find therapeutic and I almost find a sort of spiritual escape in it. Everybody has their own gods and I think I use music in that way. When someone else’s music touches me that strongly, it feels like a god-like experience or as close as you can get. There are many things that can get close to it—sex, all the stuff that comes close to that spiritual mindset. I’m trying to create something where I give off that same feeling or set of emotions that feel almost divine. I think I’d be pretty fucked up without [music]. I’d probably be on the couch permanently.

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