When
Godflesh
ended their tenure as a band with 2001's
Hymns
, it felt like the influential industrial metal outfit was revealing a portent of things to come, pointing listeners toward the carefully layered, melodic post-metal excursions that
Justin Broadrick
would go on to create with
Jesu
in the years that followed. It felt like things were done, as if the band had said all they needed to and, as a favor, were hipping listeners to what would be the next big thing in underground metal for the next decade or so. Returning not just to the band but to the stylistic roots where it initially started,
make their return with
A World Lit Only by Fire
, the duo's first album in 13 years. Where some bands tend to emerge from a long absence with a sound that feels inspired by the current trends in music,
's seventh album feels like it was influenced by their first. Although the sound has been updated, with
Broadrick
making liberal use of the guttural drone created by the eight-string guitar he used on the
record, the tone feels like classic
, evoking a world covered in rust and grime illuminated by the unforgiving and uneven light of a bare, swinging light bulb. Tense, muscular, and mechanical, it feels as though
is an elaborate machine created by
BC Green
and
, and from the moment the album's opening track, "New Dark Ages," switches over from its slowly building beat to an impossibly detuned, nearly atonal chug, it's clear that once its inscrutable engines have been engaged, there's no stopping them until they've run out of power. The worry when a band comes back from a long absence is that they'll have forgotten whatever it was that made them interesting in the first place, but
makes it crystal clear that
have a long, unfailing memory, and that their punishing work has only just begun. ~ Gregory Heaney