Few members of the music scene are as prolific as Justin Broadrick. Since the first Jesu release in 2004, he has had more than twenty releases through that project, including a number of studio albums, EPs, splits, and collaborative albums.
Of those albums, I fell deeply in love with 2007’s Conqueror several years ago, but haven’t found anything else in his extensive catalogue that has captured me quite as tightly.
That is, until last year’s Terminus, which showcases his brand of sparkling bedroom doomgaze in an understated yet compelling way.
Ever since his days with industrial metal duo Godflesh , Justin Broadrick has utilized sonic heaviness more for texture than abrasiveness. With Jesu, he pulled that even further in to create warm, womblike walls of noise. Terminus doesn’t have any surprises in its sonic palette—considering the sheer body of his work—but it really doesn’t need to. And yet, it’s the most engaging thing he’s done in years. This is likely due to the fact that, per the liner notes, the record was produced over a four-year period—a rare timeline for such a productive artist.
But the extra time pays off. The songs are personal and intimate, despite the hum of ready-to-blow speaker cabinets. Broadrick constructs rich landscapes of distorted guitars, shimmering synthesizers, drum machines, and his own voice, which rarely pushes past a gentle coo. His voice is rarely the focus, often doubled and drenched in echo. Instead, it hangs delicately in the atmosphere, weaving a thread across the slow tempos.
While the lyrics never demand your attention, when they are, they are striking. “When I Was Small” opens the record with the lyric, “I tried to see both sides, but I failed”—a fitting platitude for the divisiveness of 2020 and the years preceding it. “Consciousness” makes heavy use of a vocoder, a mechanical voice offering up the lyrics: “We will watch them fall, They will watch and rise, They will never die, Repeat for all of time.” The subject isn’t exactly clear, but this could easily be read as a cry of hopelessness in the face of oppression and fascism that continues to resurrect itself generation after generation. On “Don’t Wake Me Up,” he confesses, “I don’t know who I may be today”—a common feeling from the isolation of quarantine. In other places, the lyrics are even more impressionistic, as if they are being chosen merely for their sonic timbre rather than their meaning.
But the main focus of the album—as with all Jesu albums—is on the dense atmosphere that he builds around himself. Nothing here is mosh-worthy. In fact, it’s often more like a lullaby played at high volume. The tempos are relaxed and subdued, barring the almost-pop track “Alone” which features a chopped vocal hook and a heaping helping of shoegazy dreaminess. The instrumental closer “Give Up” has a similarly dancy drum beat, but it likely won’t make any dance playlists anytime soon due to the woozy guitars and codeine-fueled tempo. The center of the album is a pair of tracks that each surpass the eight-minute mark—”Terminus” and “Sleeping In,” both of which are plodding doomgaze tracks that are lush enough to make you get lost in the near twenty minutes of the two tracks.
In all, this may not be Jesu’s best album, but it does showcase what he does best. The tracks are the perfect marriage of doomgaze heaviness and accessible pop structures. The songs are intimate and engaging, even when paired with massive walls of noise. This is bedroom pop for the heavy metal set, and it is as gorgeous a record as he has ever made.