Justin Broadrick spent much of the 2010s busy with projects such as the reunited Godflesh and his techno moniker JK Flesh, while his post-metal outfit Jesu largely fell silent after 2013's Everyday I Get Closer to the Light from Which I Came, apart from collaborations with Sun Kil Moon and Dirk Serries. Jesu returned in 2020 with the experimental pop EP Never, which preceded the full-length Terminus. Retaining the project's signature blend of metal and shoegaze with electronic and pop elements, the album's stated themes ...
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Justin Broadrick spent much of the 2010s busy with projects such as the reunited Godflesh and his techno moniker JK Flesh, while his post-metal outfit Jesu largely fell silent after 2013's Everyday I Get Closer to the Light from Which I Came, apart from collaborations with Sun Kil Moon and Dirk Serries. Jesu returned in 2020 with the experimental pop EP Never, which preceded the full-length Terminus. Retaining the project's signature blend of metal and shoegaze with electronic and pop elements, the album's stated themes include rejection, nostalgia, and loneliness, with Broadrick's lyrics reflecting constant notions of failure, anxiety, uncertainty, and apathy. It's emotionally heavy while expressing a severe emptiness that seems impossible to overcome, and yet it's expected, even comfortable territory for the band. "When I Was Small" kicks off the album with clear drums, guitar riffs frayed with distortion, and an immediately familiar-sounding vocal melody, as Broadrick laments the disconnection he feels in the present by looking back to a time when he at least tried to feel included. "Alone" is closer to the pop-informed sound of Never, with backwards vocal loops providing strangely sweet accompaniment to Broadrick's yearning lyrics, and more urgent melodies imbuing the song with a sense of hope. His voice is altered to resemble a pitched-up robotic warble on "Consciousness," which contains drifting, atmospheric guitars over a measured, bassy drum machine throb. Two tracks in the middle of the album, "Terminus" and "Sleeping In," trudge along for nearly ten minutes each, both seemingly plagued with unresolved guilt. The last track is an instrumental called "Give Up," but it's actually more upbeat than the rest of the album, with delicate electronic pulses simmering underneath a wavy froth of guitar effects and synth melodies, ultimately conveying the feeling that even if all hope is gone, it's still possible to get through life and come to a sense of acceptance, if not satisfaction or resolution. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi
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