The History of Crumbling Flesh

In the fall of 1991, my best friend and I was watching Headbanger's Ball on MTV when in the middle of a death metal block, the video to Slavestate came on. I was just shocked. I couldn't see why this band was grouped between Napalm Death and Death videos, but it didn't matter much. It just stunned me. I loved it, more than words. My friend didn't think much of it though.

About 2 weeks later, that same friend bought Streetcleaner, thinking that Slavestate would be on it. I don't know why he got it, he didn't like the song! It didn't matter though, just the opening moments of Like Rats were enough to convince me that I was going to love this band. Certainly, I did.

It was April of 1992 next I knew it, and I was shopping for this very same friend's birthday gift when I stumbled on a brand new release. Pure it was called. I decided that was going to be his birthday present. We rushed home and saw the total time being 79 minutes. I didn't think that was possible! We checked each track time to find out that there was a 21 minute track there. I didn't quite understand the reasoning behind 21 minutes of feedback, I suppose there's no reasoning, it just is!

For the next two years, Pure was in my CD player non stop. I couldn't get enough. Every drum beat I know by heart, and I know that I will never forget them (well, maybe bits and pieces). Nothing could tear me away from Pure. Until Selfless came out, that is. By that time (October 1994) I had already found the old Unofficial Godflesh site ran by Bernt Rostad at the time. While very basic, (much of the internet was at that time) it had all the important and necessary info. 10 months later, I was submitting info to the page on a regular basis. Bernt (who was running quite a few other pages at the time) asked me if I wanted to take over the site. I had been mailing him at least once a week w/ some sort of update, and (i think) he couldn't keep up! :) Although I knew virtually nothing about the net, I was terribly excited, and apparently, i took him up on his offer. Using his site as the basis of Crumbling Flesh (the new witty title of the site-an idea from Bernt himself), I created a small database w/ almost no graphics. I taught myself html in hours and started working on making the site the biggest source of Godflesh info that I could. I remember the first graphic on the site was provided to me by Bernt, and since I was updating the site w/out actually seeing it (I used lynx to view the pages for the first 2 years or so), I didn't know what image he had sent me. He just told me that it'd be a fitting image for the site. About 2 days later, I finally got to checking the site w/ a graphical browser. To my surprise was an image of a woman's vagina, with a padlock hanging from it! I flipped out and ran back to my other computer room (I still don't have my own PC) and got rid of the image. I couldn't believe that was on my page for 2 days! Beyond that, the site was virtually all text, and some of you may remember a very boring looking site! Lame backgrounds, dumb little buttons...anything that I could fit into my 1.5 MB quota here at school. As time went by, I moved the site from it's old address, rachel.albany.edu, to www.albany.edu, and got an extra 3 MB to use for the site. I filled that up quickly, but at least the address was a bit easier to remember.

Backtracking a bit, I needed something that would distinguis CF from the old Unofficial Pages. So, I made it my next task to create a complete side project discography, which people laughed at me for even trying to do! With the help of hundreds of people, throughout almost 4 years, it's still not 100% complete, and I know it never will be!

So, CF has been my devoted project since then, and with the newest (and hopefully last!) change of address, you find yourself at www.godflesh.com, something I've wanted for so long. I don't know what I'd do without this site. If nothing else goes well in my day, it makes me smile to know that people enjoy the site, and that it's useful to someone. And while I've worked hard on these pages, it would just not even be remotely possible w/out the help of countless people, so I'd like to thank everyone who's reading, and everyone who has made CF one of the best things to ever happen to me.

I've graduated from the University at Albany, and moved onto a new server. I've added a bunch of new sections and even made it more visually stimulating, but worry not, CF is, and always will be designed to be easy to navigate, basic, and devoted to information, not tricky (and often annoying) net tricks. That would go against what these pages were originally created for!

Hopefully you enjoy(ed) the rest of this site, and find it easy to page through. It should have more info than you could possibly want and more about the band that changed my life. If there's ever anything you need, or want, just let me know, and as always, I'll do what I can to help you out. Thanks so much for all the support! Seeya!

-slateman. (or just trev)


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