Jesu

by Eduardo Rivadavia   Jesu is another musical project spearheaded by Birmingham-based musician and producer Justin Broadrick -- a fixture of England's extreme music scene since integrating the earliest recording lineup of Napalm Death in the mid-'80s. Also a sometimes-member of several other bands (Head of David, Techno Animal, etc.), he is probably best known for his decade-plus leadership of pioneering industrial ensemble Godflesh. Having finally, officially laid that hallowed institution to rest following a reported nervous breakdown in 2002, Broadrick turned his attention to a new entity, Jesu, which he named after the last song on Godflesh's swan song, Hymns. Essentially a solo project with Broadrick handling vocals, guitars, bass, and programming, Jesu's 2004 debut EP, Heart Ache, consisted of two, 20-minute-long meditations melding uncompromising sonic textures with seemingly abstract musings and a few hard-won melodic rewards. But with the next year's eponymous full-length release, former Godflesh associate drummer Ted Parsons (also ex-Prong, Swans, etc.) and bassist Diarmuid Dalton were called in to help flesh out a more evenly paced, and certainly more focused (though only slightly shorter, at ten minutes average per piece), set of ambient, droning, and semi-industrial extrapolations. Jesu, the album, received almost unqualified critical acclaim across the world, and encouraged Broadrick to move ahead with his new endeavor, resulting in another form-challenging EP in 2006's Silver. At the end of the year Broadrick was performing with Sunn 0))) on a tour of the U.K while Jesu's next album was leaking across the Internet. Early in 2007, Conqueror was officially released. A U.S. tour with Isis was supposed to coincide with the release, but work permits were not cleared in time and Jesu was not allowed entry in the country as the tour began.