At that time, Fall of Because was the entire opposite of all the speed stuff happening. We'd do gigs with Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror. When we would play, Paul and I would face Justin with our backs to the crowd and play for ourselves. And everybody could just... suffer the outcome!
G.C. Green / Godflesh interview, Alternative Press, 1992
Pre-GODFLESH, the band then known as FALL OF BECAUSE played live on this day in 1986.
[Fall of Because] was essentially the band that Ben [G.C. Green] and Paul Neville did together with a drum machine. I sort of usurped their band, basically. I think I convinced them that I should drum for their band. Basically, we all started hanging out after that first meeting in the street. I started going 'round to their houses, after people's parents went to bed. We'd either lock ourselves in one of their bedrooms or get the run of their lounge and listen to records. Someone would usually score a little bit of marijuana, so we'd smoke dope and listen to music. Classic formative stuff, you know? I had a number of primitive bands at the time, including Final, and Ben and Paul told me about their band.
I'd seen Fall Of Because rehearse in Ben's dad's bedroom, and they were really quite clearly influenced by the Cure - hence the guises, as well. They sounded quite like a cross between the Faith and Seventeen Seconds albums, but with a drum machine - a very pedestrian one, the cheapest drum machine you could buy. They were into the Dead Kennedys and the Buzzcocks, but they were big Black Sabbath fans as well. Ben was the one singing, but he was sort of murmuring, like, monologues. This was 1984, so they were a bit ahead of their time, really. Within a matter of months, I'd joined Napalm Death and sort of usurped Fall Of Because by presenting them with a bunch of hardcore records, like Discharge, and things like Swans and Sonic Youth. It all snowballed from there.
Justin Broadrick / Godflesh interview, Noisey, 2014
Fall Of Because is also the title of a chapter in an Aleister Crowley book. I got into Crowley through Killing Joke because I'd read their interviews in the very early '80s when I was 11 or 12 years old. I was fascinated with their obsession with the occult. And my mum and grandmother dabbled in the occult. My nan was actually a white witch, so I was fascinated by that sort of thing anyway. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if they had the name Fall Of Because before I joined the band. I'm quite lost on that, now that you mention it, because I was the one who exposed them to Killing Joke. So I'm not sure how they come 'round to the name. I know when I first met them they called themselves OPD, which stood for Officially Pronounced Dead. And then maybe I was the one who talked them into changing it to Fall Of Because? I honestly can't remember.
Justin Broadrick / Godflesh interview, Noisey, 2014
About three minutes of this recording were used as the intro to the GODFLESH song "Love, Hate (Slugbaiting)". The full show ("X-Mas Special") was released in 1999 on the compilation album Life Is Easy.
...Godflesh was more externalising something. It's about trying to communicate this sense of frustration; living in urban hell, in council estates, growing up in the 70s in Birmingham. My own upbringing was pretty confused and chaotic. I didn't really have a stable upbringing so it was all part of the process that went into making that album. Some of those songs, at least half of Streetcleaner are Fall of Because songs...
Justin Broadrick / Godflesh interview, Trebuchet, 2011
...half of side two.
G.C. Green / Godflesh interview, Trebuchet, 2011