Review by Daniel for Godflesh - Cold World (1991)

I think it’s fair to say that the first few releases from Birmingham industrial metal godfathers Godflesh blew me away back in the very early 1990’s. My immature teenage mind had simply never encountered music as cold & barren as records like “Godlfesh”, “Streetcleaner” or “Slatestate” before & I found myself absolutely lapping that shit up. By the time 1991’s “Cold World” E.P. hit the shelves I was already well & truly onboard with everything that Justin Broadrick & G.C. Green were dishing out so you can imagine my surprise upon reading the early reviews for “Cold World” which were nothing short of scathing. From the information presented to me, it sounded like Godflesh were steering away from the oppressive noise of their earlier works towards a cleaner, more accessible &… *gulp*… dance music-infused sound. My taste in metal was getting more extreme with every passing minute at the time so I elected not to investigate “Cold World” for fear of tainting my adoration for one of my very favourite artists. My attention would be more than restored through 1992’s classic “Pure” sophomore album shortly afterwards though & I’d subsequently follow each successive release with enthusiasm throughout the 1990’s but strangely I didn’t find myself investigating “Cold World” until my return to metal from a self-imposed, decade-long metal hiatus in 2009 & that experience immediately saw me questioning why I’d hesitated in the first place.

I guess it’s not too hard to see why some critics were put off by “Cold World” for purely stylistic reasons. When you take into account that extreme metal was getting progressively darker, more evil & infinitely more extreme, “Cold World” seemed to be taking Godflesh’s art in the opposite direction. But when you look at it from a creative standpoint you’ll discover that it represented a bold step out into the musical unknown & was very much a turning point for Justin’s creative direction. This becomes clearer when you consider that the next few Godflesh records took the concepts it contains & expanded on them in ways that saw Godlfesh almost transcending the boundaries that the rest of the scene were working with. Were those releases always unanimously successful? Well, no they weren’t but it was always intriguing to see a true artist exploring musical territories that hadn’t been touched on before.

“Cold World” is a four track E.P. that is a pretty solid representation of what the E.P. format was originally intended for. It was recorded as a part of the sessions for the “Pure” album & includes two brand new songs (the title track & “Nihil”) as well as two remixes of “Nihil”. “Cold World” is easily the most traditional & familiar of the four tracks although the production is noticeably cleaner & it’s more riff-based than we’d come to expect from Godflesh. Justin’s vocals are also a bit cleaner than the ugly hardcore bark he’d championed previously & one gets the feeling that “Cold World” could easily have been included on “Pure” without sounding out of place. I really like it too but wouldn’t say that it’s one of the band’s many classics. “Nihil”, on the other hand, manages to reach greater heights in my opinion. The guitar work is noisier & the instrumentation is a lot more infused with the electronic & dance music influences I mentioned. The hooks require a few listens to dig their teeth in but, once they do, you’ll find it hard to pull yourself free so I find “Nihil” to be a bold statement from Justin that warns the listener of the creative barriers he was intending on smashing down in the coming years. It’s a masterstroke from a true musical genius & is one of the most overlooked tracks of Godflesh’s career.

The two remixes aren’t quite as compelling but both are very solid inclusions nonetheless. Despite what some websites will have you believe, these reworkings don’t have much to do with metal at all & perhaps that’s been one of the stumbling blocks people have found when trying to appreciate “Cold World” as an holistic piece of art. The two tracks sound relatively similar too which probably doesn’t help the majority of listeners who don’t have the background in techno that I do. You really need to treat each track as an isolated piece in order to fully appreciate their cold, dark electro-industrial soundscapes as they don’t really work all that well when viewing “Cold World” as a collective release. For that reason, it’s easier to think of it as a single containing multiple tracks that are intended to be played in isolation, perhaps in a DJ set which is something I can relate to given that I was a club techno DJ during most of the 2000’s.

Despite the troubles some may experience with getting their heads around the E.P. format, the material on “Cold World” is all of a very high quality with the release showcasing a consistency that only elite performers can provide. Yes, it may have been Godflesh’s weakest release to the time but I’d suggest only by a small margin & this fact really only goes to prove what a special act Godflesh were. Everything they’d touched had turned to gold & people were starting to push their expectations higher into the stratosphere which made it increasingly more difficult to satisfy them. Somehow I suspect that Justin didn’t give a fuck though & “Cold World” goes a long way to proving that. It should be essential listening for fans of the band or anyone with a penchant for industrial metal artists like Fall of Because, Pitchshifter or Ministry.