Pale Sketcher

For fans of heavy music — and several of its variously punishing/terrifying and sad/ethereal permutations — Justin K Broadrick is a household name. Broadrick first appeared in 1985 as the guitarist in seminal UK grindcore band Napalm Death, and went on to found the similarly influential industrial/metal band Godflesh in 1988. Years after his genre-defining stint in Godflesh, Broadrick re-emerged in 2002 as the leader of Jesu, his current long-running metal project. In Jesu, Broadrick creates slow-moving, shoegaze-like walls of sound and explores melancholic lyrical themes. Broadrick's most-recent — and, to many purists, most controversial — venture is Pale Sketcher, in which the artist strips his sound of anything even resembling conventional metal, replacing guitars with synthesizers and drums with machines, but maintaining his penchant for bleakly beautiful sounds.

Interestingly, as Broadrick has moved from more traditional signifiers of heaviness (aggression, guitars, volume) towards their opposites (melancholy, computers, texture) his music has only gotten deeper and more affecting. In that way, Pale Sketcher may be Broadrick's heaviest work to date.