This piece was originally published at Consequence Of Sound in February 2015.
Justin Broadrick couldn’t move, nor could he be moved. He needed to move, but the forces holding him in place — fear, disillusionment — were too great to combat, having rapidly metastasized over the course of several months. Instead, he lay in bed, afflicted by an emotional, existential paralysis that had turned suffocatingly real. He had lost so much already, and now his drive had slipped away.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse possible time. There was a record to promote, a tour to play, a plane to catch. As planned, his longtime friend and collaborator Diarmuid Dalton had arrived to drive him to the airport. No amount of reasoning could uncouple Broadrick from the mattress. “I can’t fucking do this,” he said. “Godflesh is done.”