Godflesh’s second comeback album, released in 2017, was much less aggressive than its predecessor, 2014’s A World Lit Only By Fire. Post Self is almost entirely devoid of the bulldozer riffs and rage-flecked shouting of earlier Godflesh material. Instead, the guitars on tracks like “Mirror of Finite Light” are almost ambient drones, or quiet samples deep in the mix, with a pounding beat and Ben Green’s bass dominant. On “Be God,” Broadrick’s vocals are so swathed in static, they sound like the transmissions from the future in John Carpenter’s cosmic horror film Prince of Darkness. The album is a masterful display of Broadrick’s skills as a producer; every track sounds different, but they all fit together as a suite, and some are consciously paired, as indicated by their titles (“Pre Self,” “Post Self”; “The Cyclic End,” “The Infinite End”). On “Pre Self,” his guitar emits a massive clang that recalls Keiji Haino, but it’s a looped sample, not a cranked-out riff, and eventually it’s swallowed up by static and booming drums. Post Self is one of the most challenging albums in the Godflesh catalog, but also one of the most beautiful. Broadrick challenges every preconception of what Godflesh’s music is supposed to be, and comes up with some incredible new options in the process.