Godflesh release 'Living/Ending' from upcoming album 'Decay', their penultimate record
Godflesh have released a new single, 'Living/Ending', taken from their upcoming album Decay, which is set for release on September 25. The band has described Decay as their penultimate album, with one final record still to come. The news was confirmed by Rolling Stone on 12 August.
The track listing for Decay includes 'Master and Slave', 'Living/Ending', 'Feral Colony', 'Fear of Man', 'Fodder', and 'Consume Me'. All recordings for the album, including vocals, were completed before frontman Justin Broadrick's hernia surgery earlier this year.
In March, Broadrick announced on Instagram that Godflesh would retire from touring following that surgery. He told fans he could no longer scream in the way Godflesh's music demanded, and that his full healing process would take approximately six months. The surgery and recovery made live performances impossible, but the album had already been tracked in full.
The timeline has sharpened since spring. In March, Broadrick confirmed that Decay was complete, with a potential July or August release window mentioned at the time. The September 25 date now locks that schedule down.
Broadrick has also said he hopes to complete Godflesh's final album — which he has indicated will not involve shouting — by the end of 2026. That album had already been written "almost a year and a half" before the March announcement, according to a report at the time. The band aimed to record it near the end of this year.
Godflesh first formed in Birmingham in 1988, blending industrial noise with the weight of metal in a way that influenced a generation of heavier acts. The band went on hiatus in 2002 and reunited in 2009 after seven years apart. Their 2023 album Purge ranked at Number Two on Rolling Stone's list of the best metal albums of that year.
For fans, Decay arrives as both a new record and a signal that the end is in sight. One more album after this, and Godflesh plan to close the book — not on a whim, but because a body told one of underground music's most relentless voices that it could not keep going the way it had.
