Godflesh: A World Lit Only By Fire review – pioneers of heavy experimental music return

It would be impossible to overstate the impact and influence Godflesh’s pioneering industrial squall has had on heavy and experimental music over the last 26 years. While guitarist/vocalist Justin Broadrick has since embarked on many other disparate musical adventures, it is the return of this, his most celebrated band, that has really set hearts aflutter. A World Lit Only By Fire bears little resemblance to Hymns, the supposedly final Godflesh album from 2001, which eased Broadrick’s transition into the post-shoegaze blurs of Jesu. Instead, this marks a return to the bleak, grinding cacophonies of early classics like Streetcleaner and Slavestate, wherein monochrome riffs and dehumanised drums collide, conjuring a disorientating fog of urban desperation and fury; the machinistic momentum of krautrock and Suicide re-imagined through a cracked prism of post-Thatcher social alienation. It’s a sustained and hypnotic march through minimalist, post-Sabbath landscapes, and crucifyingly heavy on every level.