Pure (Godflesh album)

Pure
Studio album by Godflesh
Released	13 April 1992
Recorded	September–October 1991
Genre	Industrial metal post-metal[1][2]
Length	48:30 79:31 (CD version)
Label	Earache Relativity
Producer	J. K. Broadrick, G. C. Green
Godflesh chronology
Cold World (1991)Cold World1991 Pure (1992) Merciless (1994)Merciless1994

Pure is the second studio album by English industrial metal band Godflesh. It was released on 13 April 1992 through Earache Records. Initial reception was generally positive and has grown since then, solidifying the album as core Godflesh material.^[3][4]

In 2013, Pure was played in its near entirety at Roadburn.^[5] Robert Hampson from Loop, who contributed to many of the songs on the album, appeared and performed live with the band.^[6] The Loop song "Straight to Your Heart", which had been covered by Godflesh on the bands' 1991 split EP Loopflesh / Fleshloop, was also played.

Background

With Pure, Justin Broadrick wanted to explore the experimental side of Godflesh.^[7] However, at the time, the band was limited to 8-track reel-to-reel recording tape, which stifled some of his ambitions.^[8] To make up for the technological deficit and recent departure of Paul Neville, Loop guitarist Robert Hampson was brought in to provide additional instrumentation.^[9] Hampson ended up playing on only half of the album's songs, but the additions helped to reinforce the album's overwhelming sound.^[7] Broadrick later said the introduction "worked brilliantly."^[9]

Composition

Pure is often noted for its harsh, discordant and mechanical nature.^[2][7][11] Unlike the band's previous album, Streetcleaner (1989), which featured intentionally loose guitar playing,^[12] Pure sounds intensely structured, regimented and stiff, dominated by repetition.^[13][11] The guitar tone, a sound first explored by Broadrick on the 1991 Godflesh single "Slateman", is tinny and deliberately grating.^[14] Outright riffs are rare, leaving G. C. Green's bass and the programmed drums to guide the songs.^[7] Hampson's and Broadrick's guitar work often hang in the background, leading Pure to be a notably percussive album with some hip hop-inspired elements.^[15] Some critics viewed Pure as more consistent than Streetcleaner, with greater attention paid to its beats and grooves.^[16]

	"Spite" "Spite" shows Pure's hip hop beats. "Don't Bring Me Flowers" "Don't Bring Me Flowers" is an example of the album's stark atmosphere, unconventional application of guitars and focus on programmed percussion.
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While Pure is predominantly recognized as industrial metal, it has been cited as a key album to the post-metal genre, with some even calling it one of the genre's founding releases.^[1][2] Jon Wiederhorn of Bandcamp wrote that it was "Pure, with its more expansive structures and long stretches of billowing noise, that inspired countless metal-based groups to experiment with layered washes of sound."^[2]

Broadrick has occasionally expressed dissatisfaction with the production of the album.^[7][9] In a 2014 interview with The Quietus, he said, "My objections are the mixing. Not heavy enough. I was listening to a lot of hardcore hip hop at the time and I wanted the beats to be as heavy as that. That's my lingering dissatisfaction with that album."^[9] Still, when referring to what he considers and what he believes fans consider to be true Godflesh material, Broadrick often includes Pure.^[3][4] The album remains a staple of Godflesh's relatively picky live sets, with "Spite" and "Mothra" appearing most often.^[17]

Release

Pure was released on 13 April 1992. The CD version of includes two bonus tracks: "Love, Hate (Slugbaiting)", the first three minutes of which are taken from a 1986 live performance of a previous incarnation of Godflesh called Fall of Because,^[18] and a protracted ambient piece, "Pure II". Pure was reissued in August 2009 as part of a triple-CD package which also included the Slavestate EP (1991) and the Cold World EP (1991).^[19] "Mothra", a song that Decibel magazine called one of Broadrick's most accessible,^[20] was released as a promotional single for the album.^[21]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[7]
Melody Maker	Very positive[13]
Q	[22]
Robert Christgau	[23]

Pure received positive reviews upon release in 1992. Since then, its acclaim has grown. When the album came out, AllMusic reviewer Ned Raggett wrote, "In terms of grinding guitars and shouted vocals [...] it's pure Godflesh ire."^[7] In another contemporary review, Melody Maker writer Sharon O'Connell praised Pure for its weight, rhythm and ability to cover traditionally miserable topics in a "strangely life-affirming, almost soaringly spiritual" way.^[13] Also writing in 1992, Mike Gitter of Spin said, "driven by a monolithic drum machine that hammers with such force it could probably shift the tectonic plates, Godflesh successfully lays claim to the title of the most gloriously uncomfortable noise on the face of the planet."^[24] Fact wrote in their 2012 "The 100 Best Albums of the 1990s" list, where Pure placed number 64, that "[the album] is far from the sound of Broadrick and Green going soft: one listen to the rampaging drum machines of its title track on a proper stereo is unforgiving proof of that."^[25] In 2014, Neil Kulkarni of The Quietus called the album a "stone-cold masterpiece."^[9] Later in 2015, Fact's Robin Jahdi placed Pure as the 18th best post-metal album of all time, writing "Pure is what happened when they started experimenting: incredibly harsh worlds of discordant post-punk guitar settling like factory smoke over catchy drum machine breakbeats."^[2]

Track listing

Personnel

All credits adapted from Pure liner notes.^[18]

• Justin Broadrick – guitar, vocals, engineering, production
• G. C. Green – bass, engineering, production
• Robert Hampson – guitar (tracks 1, 3, 4, 8 and 10)
• Paul Neville – guitar (track 9)
• Machines – rhythm, samples

References