The EP might be the ideal format for Justin Broadrick's music, regardless of his alias. Whether he's trying to erase your head via concrete-slab guitars in Napalm Death, reduce techno to a series of clockwork hammerblows with Final, or massage your pleasure centers with neo-shoegaze in Godflesh, Broadrick's music has a laudable singularity. The three-or-four-song dose mainlines his all-consuming mood of the moment without the potential dilution of trying to fill up a CD. Broadrick claims to be channeling his long-unused (or presumed non-existent) pop instincts via Jesu, and the band's DNA always has too much of hard rock's cathartic oomph and pop's peaks and valleys to pass for ambient. But Jesu's extended-players like Silver, Lifeline, and now Opiate Sun do seem to bring out Broadrick's more memorable riffs and choruses. If nothing else, they foreground those riffs and ringing climaxes in a way that the hour-plus ebb-and-flow of Jesu or Conqueror isn't designed to do. Opiate Sun isn't as good as the all-over bodiless sparkle of Lifeline, which may be the best non-collaborative release in Broadrick's unwieldy discography. It's more of a Jesu sampler, a four-song distillation of the band's major modes, with some of Broadrick's most accessible, ingratiating songwriting-- radio-ready if not for the tempos and the fuzz. "Losing Streak" and the title track are more or less arena alt-rock at a snail's pace, almost cuddly and triumphant enough to be a Foo Fighters single, or maybe Probot if Dave Grohl had drafted Kevin Shields instead of Lemmy. (Plus, I swear, a hint of slow-motion southern rock grandeur in "Losing Streak"'s mid-song solo). "Deflated" is one of those oxymorons Jesu do so well-- the angelic dirge-- with bass skirting doom metal while the guitar auditions for some early-1990s Creation Records A&R dude. "Morning Light" really is doom, the only out-and-out metal tune here, skewed only by Broadrick's multi-tracked sad-dude vox. Add it all up and (more or less) you've got Jesu. So Opiate Sun is both the most recent fix for Jesu addicts anxiously awaiting album número tres, and an easy-access jump-on point for not-quite-yet-fans. Opiate Sun's heavy enough to act as gateway drug for those who still know Broadrick only as the guy behind Godflesh's decade-long bad day (if such creatures even exist). It will please the post-'gaze guitar-texture freaks who cream on contact with sonorous feedback. And it's memorable enough to hook those one-and-done consumers of the album-abjuring age. Not bad for four songs. — Jess Harvell, October 30, 2009