But I don’t think I’m giving Broadrick too much credit when I saw these shoddy aspects only strengthen the notion that Terminus is a skeletal, brittle document of someone at a brutal low point. These aspects might come off as lazy, or give the album a rushed feeling. The low, overdriven guitars suffocate the low end, and the haphazard mixing pushes every element into the red. Throughout the record, frequent collaborator Tim Parson’s drums drop out for a split seconds, and verses and choruses feel roughly taped together, creating a subtly disarming sense of unease. Despite the dejected emotions that seethe through the songs, he often imbues them with subtly gorgeous vocal melodies.Įven so, Terminus is a decidedly more lo-fi and stitched together album than what we’re used to from Broadrick. And yet, songs like “Alone” and “Give Up” re-affirm that Broadrick originally started Jesu as a way to explore more conventional pop songwriting. The record sinks into a wallowing mood as it goes into its second half, toning down the distortion and emphasizing Broadrick’s wounded singing. It’s also front-loaded with some of Jesu’s best songs to date: “When I Was Small”, the title track, and “Sleeping In” are the heaviest songs on the record, featuring exquisitely heart-rending riffs and trudging tempos, while the sample-heavy “Alone” is one of his most complete electro-pop excursions. Terminus can be moving in a way that Jesu hasn’t quite been before. Vocals and lyrics were never the main draw for Jesu, but the airier arrangements shed more light upon the despondent ruminations on loss and destructive patterns. Over wooly slowcore riffs, greyscale electronic textures, and sparse percussion work, Broadrick delivers a nakedly emotional vocal performance, perhaps a career best it strains as he goes high, and quivers as he sinks lower. Loneliness, depression, and regret permeate these songs, as evidenced simply by glancing at the tracklist (see the miserable suite of “Disintegrate”, “Don’t Wake Me Up”, and “Give Up” that brings the album to a close). The earth-rumbling distortion of earlier works has receded even further into the past, but Terminus is still a heavy record. Given the depressive nature of Jesu’s back catalogue, this isn’t particularly surprising what is, however, is that it’s the project’s best album since their debut. Yet even after those meandering and half-baked projects, Jesu’s fifth (or sixth, depending on who you ask) full-length Terminus arrives not with renewed spirit, but with deep loss and hopelessness. In the time since his last full-length under the moniker, he provided the instrumentals for two Sun Kil Moon/Jesu collaborations that were unfortunately released when the widespread fatigue towards Mark Kozelek’s artless journalistic ramblings was palpable and then there was the heavily loop-based EP Never from earlier this year, a twenty minute release that bordered on interminable. Broadrick revived Godflesh a few years ago, it was inevitable that his post-metal project Jesu would take a back seat, although it never fully went away for too long. Review Summary: A return to miserable form.
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