JK FLESH - Posthuman

Had the end of the world predicted by the Mayans actually come to pass, the scenarios straight out of "The Day After" would have shown great industrialized cities half-destroyed, with a few battered survivors trying to carry on amid smoking ruins and shattered metal carcasses.

That chaos and its aftermath find a fitting sonic representation in the monolith that is "Posthuman" by JK Flesh, aka that genius Justin K Broadrick, already the mastermind behind Godflesh and later active with many other noise and martial-industrial projects (Ice, God, Sweet Tooth, Final, Techno Animal, early Napalm Death) as well as his own personal brand of shoegaze (Jesu).

From the very start the artist developed an unmistakably recognizable guitar sound, a razor-sharp, piercing interplay of effects that now comes paired with brutal electronic dynamics and an unsettling rhythmic base that acts like a genuine press crushing everything in its path.

On this painful, "cinematic" new record, the impression one gets is that it's not a human being playing, but robots and machines that have taken over, commanding everything and subjugating humanity to a technological regime that shows no mercy to anyone and instead comes across as oppressive, with no room for dialogue.

Even Broadrick's voice is something unlistenable and warped, as if the human scream had been silenced by tampering and by the cries of steel and iron overseers.

Will anyone manage to escape it? The closing track is titled "Walk Away", but where this flight is headed is still anyone's guess.

While we wait for the sequel to this saga, we let ourselves be annihilated by this episode, as brutal as it is engrossing.

Ride the wave of great music

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08/01/2013