User
Reviews 5 Approval 97%
Soundoffs 61 Album Ratings 5510 Objectivity 88%
Last Active 09-06-22 1:37 pm Joined 09-24-05
Review Comments 7,401
| Lists | | 03.31.21 | tec’s GODFLESH, Ranked | 03.22.21 | tec’s THE SMITHS, Ranked | 03.11.21 | tec’s RADIOHEAD, Ranked ♦ | 03.01.21 | tec’s THE NATIONAL, Ranked ♦ | 02.22.21 | tec’s BJORK, Ranked ♦ | 02.18.21 | Breakfast Cereal Tier List | 02.03.21 | tec's DAVID BOWIE, Ranked ♦ | 01.20.21 | tec's SONIC YOUTH, Ranked ♦ | 01.05.21 | MUSIC: tec's Top 50 of 2020 ♦ | 11.23.20 | 2020 // 25 UNDER 25 | 10.27.20 | Just got Nintendo SWITCH | 10.07.20 | tectac's Electric Wizard, Ranked | 08.26.20 | tec's Top 100 Albums of All Time ♦ | 08.21.20 | FILM: tectac's Kelly Reichardt, Ranked | 07.07.20 | Top 25 of 2020: So Far! (Sept.) | 05.27.20 | FILM: tectac's Hayao Miyazaki, Ranked ♦ | 05.12.20 | MUSIC: tectac's Swans, Ranked ♦ | 03.15.20 | FILM: tectac's Tsai Ming-liang, Ranked | |
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tec’s GODFLESH, Ranked
For those times when you want to perform autoasphyxiation but don’t quite have the guts to pull it off! | 14 | | Godflesh Us and Them
Overall Score | 2.21 | 🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑
🥇 I, Me, Mine
🥈 Bittersweet
🥉 Live to Lost
Simply put: Not a fan of the gigantic drum ‘n’ bass influence here. You’ll see me reiterate this sentiment later in my capsule for POST SELF, but *this* album takes the contribution to diminishing returns, feeling like an off-kilter hardcore hip-hop or breakbeat album half the time, which isn’t what whets my appetite when I’m in the mood for Godflesh. This is mostly a matter of personal opinion, as the record has remarkably good acclaim, and is often rated higher than many of the albums I’ve placed ahead of it. I have no grudge against hip-hop drum looping, per se, but its integration into industrial metal needs to be subtler and more deftly handled to truly work. It kinda swallows everything whole here, and often just makes me writhe with discomfort. | 13 | | Godflesh Cold World
Overall Score | 2.38 | 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑
🥇 Cold World
🥈 Nihil
🥉 Nihil (Total Belief Mix)
Debated whether to even include this “EP” which feels more like a single and a B side with some unnecessary remixes, but I do enjoy the title track for what its worth—far from the top rung of Godflesh songs but plenty evocative of the cold and alienated atmosphere that they so often nail with aplomb. “Nihil” is fine, if relatively unexciting, but the two remixed versions are totally superfluous and massively lackluster in comparison. They just feel so…empty, and the mild electronic upgrades are hardly worth the tape space. Stay for the first two tracks, forget the rest. | 12 | | Godflesh Post Self
Overall Score | 2.60 | 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑
🥇 Post Self
🥈 Be God
🥉 No Body
*Sigh*… As I said before, I really just don’t care for the dub and borderline hip-hop influences here; not that I have anything against those genres on their own, but the amalgam they create with the traditional Godflesh sound - angry, sludgy industrial music - is underwhelming at best and mega-corny at its very worst. Granted, some tracks carry a respectable balance (i.e., the three listed above), but moreover the album strays too far into the “dub metal” category for my tastes. I recognize that’s an entirely personal affliction, however—this is *good* from the standpoint of composition and production, I’m just ambivalent to most of it. | 11 | | Godflesh Messiah
Overall Score | 3.00 | 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
🥇 Messiah
🥈 Sungod Dub
🥉 Scapegoat
Good, but largely unremarkable, and a bit aggravated by the unnecessary implementation of “dub” versions of each of the four tracks. (I do prefer the dub version of “Sungod,” but the rest of them are inferior to their original counterparts.) Sounds a little bit like Godflesh phoning it in here - and, to be honest, their autopilot is better than many others’ max efforts - which is more disappointing than anything. Could do without “Wilderness of Mirrors”, but the other three songs make worthy (if somewhat middle-tier) contributions to the Godflesh canon. | 10 | | Godflesh Songs of Love and Hate
Overall Score | 3.18 | 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
🥇 Wake
🥈 Sterile Prophet
🥉 Circle of Shit
Starts off so incredibly strong that I was sure this would end up somewhere among my Top 5. “Wake”, “Sterile Prophet”, and “Circle of Shit” are quintessential Godflesh—loud, crunchy, angry, pessimistic, full of hate, and laden with their signature guerilla repetition, the sort of sonic lobotomy that drills directly into the backside of your skull. (I mean that in a *good* way, to be sure.) But things take a sharp nosedive starting with “Hunter”, which sounds like some weird nu-metal / hardcore hip-hop hybrid atop which Broadrick mindlessly hollers. The album unfortunately never fully recovers from this weird transition, though two tracks come close (“Angel Domain” and “Frail”). Far from poor, simply not the brand of Godflesh that makes me swoon hardest. | 9 | | Godflesh A World Lit Only by Fire
Overall Score | 3.35 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
🥇 Shut Me Down
🥈 Curse Us All
🥉 New Dark Ages
Half of these tracks are really good, the other half are mostly just fine, creating a somewhat unbalanced experience but overall a positive one, especially considering it blossomed after over a decade of silence (not including the EP release a few months earlier), which is usually a precursor to inevitable failure. Even the tracks that are “merely decent” are enjoyable to some degree—e.g. “Deadend,” “Obeyed,” “Imperator”—and, thankfully, there isn’t a single sore spot on the album. There just isn’t a ton to get riled up about, either, and the best tracks (listed above, along with “Life Giver Life Taker” and “Towers of Emptiness”), while great, are hardly world beaters. I’ll take that over utter shit any day. | 8 | | Godflesh Merciless
Overall Score | 3.38 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
🥇 Blind
🥈 Flowers
🥉 Merciless
Yet another immensely solid extended play from Godflesh - nothing quite groundbreaking here, and it doesn’t tread any uncharted territory beyond the band’s previous work, but it churns with the same misanthropic and desolate aggression that foregrounds their best albums. Maybe a tad on the repetitive side, too, even for a group that’s built a reputation around cyclic pummeling, but fans of Godflesh should enjoy each of the four tracks offered up here. “Unworthy” is the weakest of them all, if only because I don’t find its mild electro-influences particularly exciting. | 7 | | Godflesh Pure
Overall Score | 3.40 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
🥇 Mothra
🥈 Predominance
🥉 Pure
There may be no bigger gearshift in Godflesh’s catalog than the one from STREETCLEANER to this (the only other contender is the jump from US AND THEM to HYMNS), and while its clearly the same band responsible for both albums, the overall sound is strikingly different, largely because the way the instruments and tones are implemented this time around evokes a completely unique mood. It’s more upbeat - in an odd way, surely, but more upbeat nonetheless - and sonically brighter…yet it’ll still pummel you and grind your bones down into a fine powder just the same. An interested venture, but it works for the most part. (Could do without that last track, though - or at least severely truncate it). | 6 | | Godflesh Selfless
Overall Score | 3.45 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
🥇 Mantra
🥈 Anything Is Mind
🥉 Xnoybis
If I were forced to listen to Godflesh’s discography in random order then categorize them chronologically based on the perceived evolution of sound, I’d surely place this between STREETCLEANER and PURE as it seems a logical progression from the unfettered hyperagression of the former to the tighter, more robotically rhythmic meter of the latter. Easily as dark, depressive, and hateful as anything they’d done hitherto, yet there’s a detectable….softness (?) that makes this maybe Godflesh’s most immediately approachable album. | 5 | | Godflesh Decline and Fall
Overall Score | 3.50 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
🥇 Dogbite
🥈 Ringer
🥉 Playing With Fire
The sudden return of Godflesh in 2014 was an unexpectedly promising one, laden with an EP (ahem, this one here) and a subsequent full-length that could’ve easily been pulled from their archives sometime in the late-80s or early-90s, and I say that in complete earnest. DECLINE & FALL’s opening track, “Ringer,” paves the way for quintessential, classic Godflesh - rhythmic, pounding drums, guitars with the distortion of an amplifier ablaze, and a bass tone so sludgy that it actually feels grimy just listening to it. Granted, nothing here sounds particularly new, massively exciting, or at all revolutionary, nor is anything truly “better” than that of which Godflesh delivered decades earlier. But hey - this is far superior to what most bands release after a long hiatus. | 4 | | Godflesh Hymns
Overall Score | 3.58 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
🥇 Jesu
🥈 Paralyzed
🥉 Defeated
For me, personally, HYMNS represents a glorious semi-return to form on the heels of Godflesh’s biggest career misstep (again, in my personal opinion). Ditches the musical hardcore hip hop influences, breakbeat drum tracks, and all its remnants to deliver their most pure cross-pollination of sludge and industrial metal since STREETCLEANER. Goes hard, loud, and dirty from the opening track and rarely lets up. There are a couple misfires, e.g. “Regal” which has some of the most awkward vocals in Godflesh’s catalog (for no apparent reason?), but all things considered, this was a good direction for the band to take. | 3 | | Godflesh Slavestate
Overall Score | 3.63 | 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
🥇 Perfect Skin
🥈 Slavestate
🥉 Meltdown
Another quick yet punishing EP evoking the same brutal energy Godflesh spewed in their first two releases, only with an electro-industrial influence that’s more at the forefront, especially from a percussive and atmospheric standpoint. You’re still getting tossed into the meat grinder, but this time the meat grinder is located at the center of a nightmarish, gothic techno club. Something like that. The guitar tones here are just as crunchy and abrasive as they’ve ever been, and the constantly reverberating vocals make it seem as though you’re being yelled at from the bottom of a pit. “It puts the lotion on its skin,” they say. | 2 | | Godflesh Godflesh
Overall Score | 4.00 | 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
🥇 Weak Flesh
🥈 Avalanche Master Song
🥉 Spinebender
A wonderful - and wonderfully dense - precursor to their acclaimed full-length debut. Evokes the same level of apocalyptic dread and unwavering nihilism, but with a subjunctive rawness that coincides beautifully with the overarching atmosphere. Arguably even more pessimistic than STREETCLEANER - denser guitar tones, longer sections of repetition, and a bigger emphasis on harrowing dissonance - which makes for an enervating affair, but sometimes you need to have the shit kicked out of your senses to really, truly feel alive…Nomsayin’? A fantastic EP. | 1 | | Godflesh Streetcleaner
Overall Score | 4.25 | 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
🥇 Like Rats
🥈 Pulp
🥉 Locust Furnace
I mean…how could this *not* be first place, right? Its greatness is almost undeniable, and even those averse to the niche genre tend to recognize its comparative quality at the very least. As a huge fan of early Swans, STREETCLEANER scratches that occasional itch for something a little less tonally miserable while still delivering heaps of unrelenting aggression and hypnotic decimation. Dark and angry, yet strangely elegant in its own, twisted way. Like an iron maiden for your soul, if the iron maiden were painted a rich purple hue and doused in floral perfume. And then set on fire. | |
tectactoe
03.31.21 | This week’s list: Everyone’s favorite industrial sludge metal band! (Right??) | tectactoe
03.31.21 | Also I omitted one (or two?) of the “EPs” that I felt didn’t really abide by the spirit of these sorts of lists, mostly because they either contain no new material or are barely canonical to the band’s oeuvre. | DoofDoof
03.31.21 | woah 7 and 12 both ranked far too low for me - and 4 too high | loulou
03.31.21 | Great list! 7 is higher in my heart. | tectactoe
03.31.21 | @Doof - had no idea you were a Godflesh fan!
Yes it seems I’ve underrated 7 compared to how most people would. I do enjoy the album quite a bit, but it’s almost a little *too* polished for its own good. Weird complaint, I know but 🤷🏼♂️ | GhandhiLion
03.31.21 | How do you rate albums with the ape escape cookies | tectactoe
03.31.21 | Like this 🌝🌝🌚🌚 | rabidfish
03.31.21 | us and them is heavy underrated.
post self rulz. | EyesWideShut
03.31.21 | I got a broski who swears by this band but I never really checked em out. Where would the Silver EP rank ? Might have heard that one. | evilford
04.01.21 | 1 is 1, at least we agree on that
Although I'm super salty that u didn't even mention I Wasnt Born To Follow, which is probably the greatest song ever made | tectactoe
04.01.21 | I see you have the debut EP rated highly too, though 😀 smart man.
I Wasn’t Born to Follow is a great song, love the drum track in that one. Honestly would probably be my fourth or fifth pick behind the three listed above! It might not be my favorite but PURE is a very consistent album. | Ryus
04.01.21 | from what ive heard, 1 is definitely 1 and 2 is definitely 2. havent heard 14 but the drum n bass influence is very intriguing haha | evilford
04.01.21 | Yeah the ep is super gr8, I've toyed with 5ing it | rabidfish
04.01.21 | The dub and dnb influences work perfect, dunno what u on about mate | Havey
04.01.21 | tec's GEROGERIGEGEGE, Ranked | Havey
04.01.21 | do it | kkarron
04.01.21 | I emphatically do not agree with some of your lower ratings (14, 12, 10, 9) but I respect your opinion on them.
What I less respectfully disagree with is saying that Christbait Rising is not the best Godflesh track, like, ever.
Shit, maybe it's the best piece of music ever, period. | VlacDrac
08.20.21 | Messiah that low should result in a ban. | CottonSalad
08.20.21 | I couldn’t even begin ranking this haha, so props regardless | CottonSalad
08.20.21 | I couldn’t even begin ranking this haha, so props regardless | VlacDrac
08.20.21 | @kkarron Agreed on the Christbait Rising part, song hits even harder performed live. | kkarron
08.20.21 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL5uYGSJYbk
I can feel my soul festering listening to this yo. | tectactoe
08.20.21 | 'What I less respectfully disagree with is saying that Christbait Rising is not the best Godflesh track, like, ever.'
It is great, you're right. Problem is, STREETCLEANER is stacked. Literally *every* song on it is great (or, at the very least, extremely "good"), so the competition is tough. Opener has always been my favorite, though. It's like the grimy hand that pulls you in. Can't listen to 'Like Rats' without inevitably listening to the entire album. | kkarron
08.22.21 | Aye, it's a total "no filler, all killer" album. | loveisamixtape
08.22.21 | 2 is def 2 but 6 is def 1 … | Relinquished
08.22.21 | brave your opinion but you its wrong | Flugmorph
08.22.21 | assthethicc |
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