Godflesh set penultimate album ‘Decay’ for 25 September on Relapse
Godflesh release “Decay”, their tenth and penultimate album, on 25 September 2026 through Relapse Records. First single “Living/Ending” is out now.
The six tracks on “Decay” came out of the same sessions as “Purge” three years ago, and Justin Broadrick held them back while he looked for a label. He found one: the tenth Godflesh album arrives on 25 September 2026 through Relapse Records, the first the Birmingham industrial duo have issued outside Broadrick’s own Avalanche Recordings since their 2010 return. “Living/Ending” is the first single.
“Decay” is the penultimate Godflesh album, not the last one. Broadrick has said a further record is written and still to be recorded, and in March 2026 he announced the end of Godflesh live performances after abdominal surgery for a hernia.
Broadrick explained where the record came from and why it took three years to surface:
“Decay was born from the same sessions as Purge,” he stated. “It was one huge pool of songs. I picked what I felt was appropriate for what I wanted to achieve with Purge, with the intention of releasing the songs that didn’t fit as a new album within a year of Purge being released. Unfortunately, two years passed whilst considering external labels, so that I didn’t have to self-release GODFLESH anymore, but it took an awful lot of time to establish a comfortable home for me. The recordings were done, but as usual for me, I did change a lot of stuff once I came back to it.”
The band have done this before. “Decline & Fall”, issued on 2 June 2014, was built the same way, from tracks Broadrick cut from the sessions that produced “A World Lit Only By Fire” four months later.
He also addressed how the surgery intersected with the recording, since the hernia itself came from the way he sings:
“Fortunately, all of the recordings for Decay were completed long before the surgery, vocals included… although the back end of a couple of songs were recorded with the hernia itself, and that was a struggle. I was already aware that the GODFLESH shout, so to speak, was exacerbating the hernia greatly, as was every GODFLESH performance in the lead-up to the surgery once the hernia appeared, and the hernia was mostly caused by year upon year of shouting in GODFLESH. The album was mixed post-surgery, and while I was still in some pain and considerable discomfort, but fortunately GODFLESH is generally me expressing my pain, albeit [usually] mental, philosophical and existential, whereas this was physical pain.”
Broadrick points to the opening and closing tracks as the record’s core, and notes that the two of them together run half its length:
“The bookends of Decay are the most important pieces to me. They say it all, so to speak; the album could have been just those two songs alone – the duration of them is half of the total album!”
Godflesh ‘Decay’ tracklist and formats
The album runs six tracks:
- “Master and Slave”
- “Living/Ending”
- “Feral Colony”
- “Fear Of Man”
- “Fodder”
- “Consume Me”
Relapse Records offers “Decay” on 12-inch vinyl, CD and cassette, with a digital edition through Bandcamp. A deluxe 12-inch pressing in two limited colours, housed in a silver board laminated jacket with gloss UV and packaged with a slipmat, poster and sticker, has already sold out at the label store.
About Godflesh
Justin Broadrick and bassist G.C. Green formed Godflesh in Birmingham, England, in 1988. Broadrick had played guitar on side one of Napalm Death’s “Scum” the year before, and the pair built Godflesh around downtuned guitar, bass and a drum machine rather than a live drummer. The self-titled debut EP arrived in 1988, followed by the album “Streetcleaner” on Earache Records on 13 November 1989. “Pure” came in 1992.
The band ran until 2002, when Broadrick ended the project during a US tour; “Hymns”, from 2001, was the last album of that period. He spent the following years on Jesu and other projects before reactivating Godflesh in 2010 with Green.
The reunion output came out on Broadrick’s own Avalanche Recordings. The “Decline & Fall” EP appeared on 2 June 2014 and the seventh album, “A World Lit Only By Fire”, on 7 October 2014. “Post Self” followed in October 2017 on vinyl and CD. Six years later the duo returned with the ninth album “Purge” on 9 June 2023, previewed by “the ‘Nero’ single and a US tour announcement”. Away from Godflesh, Broadrick records as JK Flesh and has remixed and contributed to work by acts including Pitchshifter and Derision Cult, the latter alongside members of Ministry and The Cure.
“Decay” leaves one Godflesh album still to record. On what closing the project means, Broadrick stated: “It expresses my pain, and I’ve put my body and soul into this expression for the majority of my existence. I feel quite lucky, because Godflesh is now physically impossible for me, rendering it useless. I now wish to move out of its constraints, move on creatively with heavy/ugly music to new ground.”
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