Jesu

The precarious balance in Jesu, one of Justin Broadrick's many (many) projects, has always been between finding a melodious, bona fide song and the minimalist, pummelling tendencies of the drum machine and downtuned guitar. On this seventh full-length, things start out promisingly with "Homesick," which fits right in the mouth of the Jesu canon, and "Comforter," a track that sounds a little like Sigur Rós in a washing machine full of molasses. However, from that point on things get a little same-y. With "The Great Leveller" — the album's 17-minute centrepiece — what promises to be a multi-chambered epic full of pensive piano parts and lighter-than-usual drum atmospherics turns into a series of fairly unrelated musical vignettes, some of which are pretty forgettable. There are great moments that fulfil expectations of Jesu as a dissolving whirlpool bath of glass shards, but these flashes don't carry the full weight of the album.