January 24, 2012
#18: Jesu - Ascension It’s been over two decades since Jesu frontman Justin Broadrick formed Godflesh. Despite the fact that he’d been playing music seriously for several years at the time, he was only 18 when Godflesh began. Now 42, it seems that he’s spent his entire adult life moving through an evolutionary musical process, one that forms a surprisingly straight line in hindsight. On early Godflesh albums, Broadrick’s harsh vocals, grinding distorted guitars, jackhammer drum machine programming, and slow, crawling song structures was a mixture of influences from doom metal, grindcore, and power electronics, all genres that he’d played as a teenager. But as Godflesh continued on, they moved away from harsher sounds and into different realms of heaviness, at times creating ambient, borderline-melodic moods. That drift continued over the course of the early Jesu albums, until their 2006 EP Silver revealed that Broadrick had discovered the overt minor-key melodic structures that dominated the best-known work of bands like My Bloody Valentine. That EP, as well as Jesu’s second full-length, Conqueror (2007), were basically the heaviest shoegaze albums ever, pounding their audience at tempos only slightly faster than those of Godflesh’s doomy prime, but with slow-motion melodic hooks that were far more beautiful than anything Godflesh ever thought about doing. I loved this particular genre crossbreed enough to make Conqueror my album of the year in 2007, and I still love to listen to it. However, the multitude of Jesu releases that occurred in the four intervening years between Conqueror and Ascension, their actual official third full-length, were always at least somewhat less than satisfying. From the demo collection Pale Sketches to the experimental tendencies of their Lifeline, Dethroned, and Christmas EPs, to the dragging wall of noise that was the one-song 50-minute release Infinity, all of them had elements of a letdown. Even Opiate Sun, an almost entirely satisfying EP, was still too short to really slake my thirst for new Jesu material. All of this buildup, from the endless onslaught of less-than-substantial releases (10, by my count, between Conqueror and Ascension) to the interminable wait for a real new Jesu LP, only made me feel even more relieved when we were finally graced with this honest-to-god official third LP in 2011. And once again, Broadrick and co. seem to be moving even further along the path that they began to walk either a decade or over two decades ago, depending on how you look at it. The lugubrious doom metal tempos are almost all that remains of Broadrick’s roots, and on some songs, such as “Sedatives,” or the somewhat uptempo coda to “December,” even those are gone. Harsh guitar distortion has, in many places on this album, given way to undistorted or even acoustic guitars, and as Broadrick’s vocals become more conventionally melodic than ever, you could even tag a few of these tunes as overt pop songs. While that might be an unpleasant realization to many of the diehard metalheads who’ve stuck with Broadrick this long, the hybrid elements of Jesu were always my favorite parts of their sound. Seeing them further push the envelope and develop a sound that is quite unusual provides me with the most enjoyment I’ve ever derived from Broadrick’s work over his long and varied career. Granted, Ascension doesn’t hit me with the immediate jolt of headcrushing bliss that I got from Conqueror; furthermore, a lot of the dilution of immediate impact is caused by Jesu’s progression away from heavier sounds on this album. And yet, I’d rather hear a veteran artist explore new and interesting territory, even if it doesn’t provide the same sort of immediate thrills that his previously traveled paths had to offer. I haven’t played Ascension to death the way I did with Conqueror four years ago, but I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit whenever I’ve reached for it, and I can’t imagine that would have been true if Broadrick and co. had merely rehashed their previous triumph. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Ascension grows on me over the course of the years to come. Even now, over six months after I first obtained it, I’m still finding new, pleasant elements hidden in this subtle, layered work. And of course, the fact that this album might very well increase in my esteem long after this list is complete points out one of the main reasons that I tend to cast a somewhat jaundiced eye over this entire year-end list-making exercise. But hey, we’re already here, so we might as well keep going, right?

#18: Jesu - Ascension

It’s been over two decades since Jesu frontman Justin Broadrick formed Godflesh. Despite the fact that he’d been playing music seriously for several years at the time, he was only 18 when Godflesh began. Now 42, it seems that he’s spent his entire adult life moving through an evolutionary musical process, one that forms a surprisingly straight line in hindsight. On early Godflesh albums, Broadrick’s harsh vocals, grinding distorted guitars, jackhammer drum machine programming, and slow, crawling song structures was a mixture of influences from doom metal, grindcore, and power electronics, all genres that he’d played as a teenager. But as Godflesh continued on, they moved away from harsher sounds and into different realms of heaviness, at times creating ambient, borderline-melodic moods.

That drift continued over the course of the early Jesu albums, until their 2006 EP Silver revealed that Broadrick had discovered the overt minor-key melodic structures that dominated the best-known work of bands like My Bloody Valentine. That EP, as well as Jesu’s second full-length, Conqueror (2007), were basically the heaviest shoegaze albums ever, pounding their audience at tempos only slightly faster than those of Godflesh’s doomy prime, but with slow-motion melodic hooks that were far more beautiful than anything Godflesh ever thought about doing. I loved this particular genre crossbreed enough to make Conqueror my album of the year in 2007, and I still love to listen to it.

However, the multitude of Jesu releases that occurred in the four intervening years between Conqueror and Ascension, their actual official third full-length, were always at least somewhat less than satisfying. From the demo collection Pale Sketches to the experimental tendencies of their Lifeline, Dethroned, and Christmas EPs, to the dragging wall of noise that was the one-song 50-minute release Infinity, all of them had elements of a letdown. Even Opiate Sun, an almost entirely satisfying EP, was still too short to really slake my thirst for new Jesu material. All of this buildup, from the endless onslaught of less-than-substantial releases (10, by my count, between Conqueror and Ascension) to the interminable wait for a real new Jesu LP, only made me feel even more relieved when we were finally graced with this honest-to-god official third LP in 2011.

And once again, Broadrick and co. seem to be moving even further along the path that they began to walk either a decade or over two decades ago, depending on how you look at it. The lugubrious doom metal tempos are almost all that remains of Broadrick’s roots, and on some songs, such as “Sedatives,” or the somewhat uptempo coda to “December,” even those are gone. Harsh guitar distortion has, in many places on this album, given way to undistorted or even acoustic guitars, and as Broadrick’s vocals become more conventionally melodic than ever, you could even tag a few of these tunes as overt pop songs. While that might be an unpleasant realization to many of the diehard metalheads who’ve stuck with Broadrick this long, the hybrid elements of Jesu were always my favorite parts of their sound. Seeing them further push the envelope and develop a sound that is quite unusual provides me with the most enjoyment I’ve ever derived from Broadrick’s work over his long and varied career.

Granted, Ascension doesn’t hit me with the immediate jolt of headcrushing bliss that I got from Conqueror; furthermore, a lot of the dilution of immediate impact is caused by Jesu’s progression away from heavier sounds on this album. And yet, I’d rather hear a veteran artist explore new and interesting territory, even if it doesn’t provide the same sort of immediate thrills that his previously traveled paths had to offer. I haven’t played Ascension to death the way I did with Conqueror four years ago, but I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit whenever I’ve reached for it, and I can’t imagine that would have been true if Broadrick and co. had merely rehashed their previous triumph.

If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Ascension grows on me over the course of the years to come. Even now, over six months after I first obtained it, I’m still finding new, pleasant elements hidden in this subtle, layered work. And of course, the fact that this album might very well increase in my esteem long after this list is complete points out one of the main reasons that I tend to cast a somewhat jaundiced eye over this entire year-end list-making exercise. But hey, we’re already here, so we might as well keep going, right?

2:04am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z-FUayFHT9UO
(Notes: 7)
  
Filed under: Top 20 of 2011 
  1. andrewtsks posted this