Greymachine

In case you were worried that Justin K. Broadrick was getting too soft with Jesu, he's back to remind everyone that he's still the guy who gave us Godflesh. Greymachine finds the prolific maestro joined by heavyweights like Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom), Dave Cochrane (Head of David, God Ice) and Diarmuid Dalton, also of Jesu and Godflesh. Their debut album, Disconnected, is dead set on returning to the days when Godflesh inflicted punishment, terror and beauty on eardrums. But Greymachine's compositions move at a slower rate, bringing the brutality with a doom-filled heaviness that asphyxiates with an impenetrable wall of noise built by scraping riffage and floating effects. Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up. "Vultures Descend" is a mighty fine piece of ruthlessly sludgy noisecore and "Easy Pickings" spirals into an ominous finale, but all too often Greymachine sound like they're practicing. "Just Breathing" is a chugging onslaught of fluid guitar noise that has no real structure, "Wasted" is a near-nine-minute jam session and "Sweatshop," while getting closest to the shock and awe of Godflesh, with a pounding industrial rhythm, doesn't feature much else. While it shows Broadrick can still find that harsh realm he cut his teeth on, Disconnected doesn't live up to the massive potential Greymachine had on paper.