Godflesh "Songs Of Love And Hate (UK, Earache Records, mosh157cd)"

Songs of Love and Hate is the fourth studio album by English industrial metal band Godflesh. Released on 20 August 1996 through Earache Records, it is the band's first album to feature live drums, played by drummer Bryan Mantia, combining a heavy metal sound with a more pronounced hip-hop influence, toning down the industrial and mechanical elements of previous releases. The cover is a photograph of Cancer Alley, Louisiana.

An accompanying dub-inspired remix album, Love and Hate in Dub, was released in 1997. Both records were reissued by Earache in 2009.

The choice to replace Godflesh's signature drum machines with a combination of sampled loops and live drumming by Bryan Mantia stemmed from Justin Broadrick's growing dissatisfaction with the limitation of mechanical percussion. After initially making Songs of Love and Hate exclusively with machines, Broadrick decided that there was a lack of dynamic range and groove. About the search for the proper drummer, Broadrick said, "The aim was to get a drummer who plays like a machine, but we wanted a feeling of movement and motion as opposed to a machine where it's very, very static."

Mantia said in 2018 that he was approached by his cousin, who was managing Mr. Bungle at the time, to join the band. Initially, he felt intimidated by Broadrick, calling him "scary," but soon found a common ground for their love of jungle music. A few months after the album's release, Mantia was unable to commit his time in Europe and left the band. He has not been in contact with Broadrick ever since but would love to someday.

According to AllMusic's Jason Birchmeier, Songs of Love and Hate sounds "less mechanical and more fluid than preceding albums." Most of the tracks are on the verse-chorus-verse form. On the album's sound, Meier further commented, "The monolithic riffs grind harmoniously as they never have before, with Broadrick's gigantic guitar tone bulging through the speakers with rude, distorted salience while Green's bass guitar grinds with more prominence than one can nearly handle. To make the sounds even more extreme, B. Mantia smashes and hammers his drums with rabid aggression, instilling the sense of anger than no machine can possibly accomplish." Peter Buckley, the author of The Rough Guide to Rock, considered Mantia's drumming as "occasionally funky".

In 2018, on the tour supporting Godflesh's 2017 album Post Self, the band performed "Gift from Heaven" live. It was quickly dropped from the set for, according to Broadrick, not working in a live setting.

Track listing

1. "Wake" 4:19
2. "Sterile Prophet" 4:18
3. "Circle of Shit" 4:53
4. "Hunter" 4:39
5. "Gift from Heaven" 7:45
6. "Amoral" 4:56
7. "Angel Domain" 3:55
8. "Kingdom Come" 5:34
9. "Time, Death and Wastefulness" 6:12
10. "Frail" 5:24
11. "Almost Heaven" 5:41

Total length: 57:36

First Godflesh release to contain full lyrics in the booklet, as well as a studio drummer (Brian Mantia).

"Circle of Shit" samples Gang Starr's "Speak Ya Clout".

Contrary to popular belief, the album cover picture here and the one later on "Love and Hate in Dub" are not in the same location nor were they taken by the same photographer.

Some interesting notes from Antz who worked on most of Godflesh's art and worked for Earache during the mid-late '90s on recreating reissue artwork for reissue albums:

"The cover for LaHiD isn't the same place as the cover for the SoLaH album. I know they look similar but the shots were both taken by different photographers and in different places. The second shot was sourced because it looked like the first but more doomy. The cross in the first cover was digitally moved on the cover to make a better image and on the second one the sky was enhanced to make it more interesting. Originally the cover of the second album was going to be the same as the first but with an effect like tracing paper down the right hand side with the new title on but in the end Justin and I decided to come up with a different idea. Having the digipak format as the main CD format on the second CD took a lot of persuading with Earache as it was more expensive than a normal case. "

Recording information:

Engineered at Avalanche, England & Tyrell productions, Oakland, CA, USA from late 1995 to early 1996.

Produced at Avalanche, England in early 1996.