fakejazz.com

Oh my god, who swapped Mark Kozelek's pedals with those of a metal band? To all the pussies out there (myself included) too afraid to listen to actual metal, Justin Broadrick (who started off in metal stalwarts Napalm Death and Godflesh) is willing to meet you halfway. More than halfway. With Broadrick's third release under the Jesu name, he inches a few more steps away from metal and has created a 30 minute EP that's more tender and emotional than any doom-filled music has any right being. While the heaviness of the guitars and the gentleness of the pop songs underneath could make this seem like just another My Bloody Valentine retread, it's arriving at the destination from an entirely different direction. Shields and all those who followed him were trying to see how much noise they could add to a pop song and still have it be a pop song; Broadrick is trying to see how much pop he can add to a heavy song and still have it be heavy. A song like "Wolves" is still as dark and ominously colored as any straightahead metal song. Big, thick doom chords crush down on your ears at a slow, deliberate pace. Underneath the hard, tough exterior, Broadrick repeats a sensitive boy, Barlow-esque refrain of "I'm not sick." Although maybe you can take that as more "defensive" and less "fragile". While "Wolves" and the outstanding title track are slow churns like you'd expect from Jesu, "Star" changes the pace by adding a driving drum machine beat. While the sounds are still on the harsh side, it sounds most pop and is the weakest track of the four, the guitars never sounding angrier than Broadrick's refrain of "If I could just ignore it, like you do". However, when Jesu is even more experimental on "Dead Eyes," shuffing up keyboard and electronics, it's amazing, creating a pastoral, FSA-like soundscape, and when the monsterous guitar riff comes in, I just want to sing "I wanna die in the USA" overtop of it - reminding me of JAMC's "Reverence."

jesu at Amazon & Insound