Jesu – “Pity” & “Piety”

Jesu – “Pity” & “Piety”

For nearly two decades, Godflesh leader Justin K. Broadrick has been releasing deep, depressive, finely sculpted music under the name Jesu. Broadrick has many alter-egos for his solo work, but Jesu is the most celebrated, and it’s also the hardest to fit in any genre category. Maybe Jesu is bottom-heavy indie rock? Maybe it’s drone-goth? Maybe it’s emotive, vulnerable, insular post-metal? Who can say?

In 2020, Broadrick released Terminus, the most recent Jesu LP. Earlier this year, Jesu contributed to Julien Baker’s remix EP. Today, we get two new Jesu songs, and both of those songs are long. Jesu’s new tracks are called “Pity” and “Piety,” and each of them is about 18 minutes long. That means we’ve got a full album’s worth of music in these two tracks. But these aren’t ambient drone experiments. They’re songs, and they move. (I’m on my first listen, but “Piety,” at least thus far, has been entirely instrumental. It’s still been through a bunch of different movements, though.) Listen to both tracks below.

“Pity” b/w “Piety” is out now, and you can get both tracks at Bandcamp.

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