Justin Broadrick's career isn't widely celebrated, but it's still shockingly uncompromising. From his place at the beginning of grindcore with Napalm Death to his role in Godflesh's expansion of industrial metal, the U.K. musician specializes in artistic hairpin turns. After almost three decades, Broadrick has come to a crossroads between ambient music and metal with his current project, Jesu. The band travels a path beaten by drone-metal titans such as Sunn O))) and Earth, but still makes a mark and widens the road in its own right.
Dark and brooding atmosphere is usually paramount to drone metal, but not here. Jesu's walls of distortion are uplifting in comparison to those of its doom-driven contemporaries. The band's 2009 album Infinity has its bleak moments, but that album's single 49-minute song resolves into something inspirational and grandiose by the time it's over.
The EP Opiate Sun steps in an even brighter direction. "Losing Streak" opens with distortion that might frighten the faint of heart, but once the processed vocals and major chords kick in, the volume becomes downright seductive. Even in its harshest moments, the guitars sound like a chorus of fuzzed-out angels singing a drone-metal hymn. This track's just praying for the rapture to take it to another plane.
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