Justin Broadrick

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Justin Broadrick bigraphy, stories - Record producer, musician, singer

Justin Broadrick : biography

15 August 1969 –

Justin Karl Michael Broadrick (born 15 August 1969, Birmingham, England) is a British singer, songwriter, guitarist and drummer. He was briefly in the English grindcore band Napalm Death when he was a teenager in the mid-80s, writing and recording guitar for Side One of the Napalm Death’s debut album, Scum. He is best known as a founding member of the band Godflesh, one of the first bands to combine elements of extreme metal and industrial music. Broadrick has also maintained a parallel career as a producer, producing records and remixes for groups such as Pantera, Isis, Mogwai, and Hydra Head labelmates Pelican. Broadrick has set up record labels such as HeadDirt, Avalanche, Post Mortem Productions (briefly renamed Uprising Productions), Lo Fibre and Heartache.http://palesketcher.bandcamp.com/

Biography

Childhood and first recordings (1969–1983)

Broadrick was born on 15 August 1969, in the council estates of inner Birmingham. For the first four years of his life, Broadrick was raised by his mother and stepfather in a hippie commune in Shard End. During a period of heroin addiction, Justin’s real father was mostly absent from the family home. By the age of ten, Broadrick was surrounded by the punk-rock that his parents listened to. "There was Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, but it was always the stuff that wasn’t so standard that grabbed me. I was always playing things like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music when I was about eight! Stuff like Can, the weirdest parts of Pink Floyd, Hendrix", says Justin. "The first thing I probably heard out of the house, when I was about 11 years old, was Crass", says Broadrick. "By the age of 12 I fell into early industrial music, stuff like Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse". Justin began to play with his stepfather’s guitar, who was then into Roxy Music and Brian Eno.

In 1982, he started his first musical project, the band Final with his friend Andy Swan, who had a synthesizer. The first name they went under was Atrocity Exhibition, named after a Joy Division track. Their first recording was titled Live in the Studio, and was the first catalogued release on their cassette label Post Mortem Rekordings. Shortly after, the project was named Smear Campaign, after a Nocturnal Emissions track. This was the name they went under at their first live performance on 7 July 1984 in The Mermaid in Birmingham. Promptly after the show they settled on the name Final. "We were pretty heavily into the whole industrial tape culture and fanzines of the very early ’80s", Justin says. The project developed to embrace the power electronics subgenre of industrial music in 1983, releasing material on Post Mortem. "I had about 50 Final releases over about a year and a half", he says. Other project names Broadrick recorded under included Last Exit, Crusade and Dead Pulp.

Fall of Because and Napalm Death (1984–1986)

In 1984 Broadrick joined the group Fall of Because (founded by G. Christian Green and Paul Neville in 1982) as a drummer and additional vocalist. The group recorded the Extirpate demo cassette in 1986, which contained a number of songs which were later re-worked as songs for Godflesh (including "Life is Easy", "Mighty Trust Krusher", and "Merciless"). The group disbanded in 1988. The Life is Easy compilation album of demo and live recordings was released in 1999.

Broadrick met Nicholas Bullen in 1985 at the flea market where he met Andy. Justin gave Final tapes to Bullen and they recorded some material together. "Then I played him some of the stuff I did with guitar, which he then played to another guy in Napalm Death. Basically, they were impressed with what I was doing with guitar, and so I joined Napalm Death", Broadrick says. Soon Mick Harris (then member of a psychobilly band) joined the lineup and they shifted from metal to grindcore. "Nick and I left Napalm Death after we recorded the first side of Scum. I’d had enough of Napalm Death very, very quickly", he says. Lee Dorrian and Jim Whitely joined to replace Bullen and Broadrick. Justin gave the first side to Earache Records founder Digby Pearson, who then contacted the new Napalm Death that had recorded the second side.