Godflesh - Streetcleaner (1989)Release ID: 254
Sometimes when you listen to one of these acclaimed albums and don’t like them so much, you can still see what makes the album so great. You can recognize what other people see in it and write it off as just not being your thing. But sometimes, you might just be left mystified, wondering “What am I missing?”
Just before Streetcleaner, I had been listening to Peter Gabriel’s Passion, one of his most revered releases and a widely acclaimed New Age/World Music album. The album didn’t do anything for me, mostly because I’m not a fan of the style of music. However, I could still acknowledge the great compositions and brilliant atmospheres crafted in the soundscapes, and it was no mystery to me why it is so well liked.
Streetcleaner is a different case. I love metal. I love dark, misanthropic, heavy music. But listening to Streetcleaner, I struggle to find any appeal at all. The songs are all incredibly simple, and it sounds much less like a performance and much more like each member came up with one loop and just had it repeat for 5 minutes. There’s nothing innately wrong with this, but if you’re gonna repeat something for so long, at least make it good. The riffs are barely there; boring, slow, uninspired guitar that does little other than add a sludgy atmosphere, and ditto for the bass. The drum beats are equally boring and uninspired, and aside from some occasional addition of double bass, never do anything interesting. The vocals are sometimes there, and that’s all I can say about them.
The album is certainly dark, but the problem is that it is not active in achieving this. All the music is incredibly passive, and by that I mean there’s a lot of nothing going on aside from sounding heavy and dissonant, and it becomes the listener’s job to project any actual mood to it. The music doesn’t invoke anything on its own, but rather acts as a pool to collect such projected feelings. Unique at the time, and influential for everything that came after… but I’d say this is another case of influenced far surpassing the influencer.
Godflesh was formed by Justin Broadrick after leaving Napalm Death and his own side-project that wasn't going anywhere. If anyone thought Godflesh was just another grind act, they would be surprised by an entirely new sound in their 1989 debut Streetcleaner! However, for listeners of other noisy experimental acts like Fall of Because (earlier incarnation of Godflesh) and Head of David, this pioneering industrial metal sound was already foreshadowed...
Similar to Napalm Death's debut (whom Broadrick was only that debut's first side), each of the two sides were recorded in a different session, with the CD bonus tracks that originally consisted of Tiny Tears EP. This is basically 3 distinctly cohesive EPs compiled into an over-hour-long album that helped define industrial metal!
The first 5-track side is probably the heavier groove-driven side, starting strong with the well-known tune "Like Rats", a furious groove track with a noise-powered bridge ("You breed...like rats!!"). Then we get "Christbait Rising", the track with the most groove and a bit of a hip-hop influence ("Christbait, slugbait!!"). Most of the time, I say hip-hop and metal don't mix, but I'm willing to make an exception here. The hip-hop influence is only in the beats with no rapping at all. Instead, the vocals are just shouts of aggression and reverb, the closest connection to Napalm Death. "Pulp" is another favorite here that can pulverize you into a pulp with the bass and drum machine rolling under the burning guitar slashing through vocals in a hopeless crescendo yelling "PULP" repeatedly until the last breath. "Dream Long Dead" is a good song, but not as great as the album's standouts. Another standout includes the awesome "Head Dirt". They continue playing super lower riffs that sometimes hang in the background behind bass and drums, but either way, the guitar can never go unnoticed!
Beginning the colder isolated side is the devastating intro "Devastator"! For this side, stepping in is second guitarist Paul Neville who were also with Broadrick and G.C. Green in Fall of Because. "Mighty Trust Krusher" has some of Godflesh's earliest traces. Same with "Life is Easy", with an approach easily compared to Swans before they moved out of their original industrial-noise sound at that time. Thanks to the dual guitar attack, bands like Pitchshifter would be able to emphasize their discordant lead work and help develop industrial metal. The torturously tremendous title track begins with a disturbing sound sample of suffering, then starts the industrial sludge/doom march as aliens clean the streets free from the corpses of those killed in the invasion, announcing the death of humanity. And finally, into the "Locust Furnace" the corpses of the human race are thrown into for their cremation. In that song, Justin continues his shouts of tortured devastation until the end ("FURNACE!!!").
And now, here we are at the third and final side, the unreleased "Tiny Tears" EP, starting with the title track... "Tiny Tears", probably my favorite song of that EP/side! "Wound" is another standout with its main riff bringing down even the tallest and most stable building. "Dead Head" frantically stretches out the vocals in an optimistic way. Last but not least, "Suction" is another short piece. Similar to the rest of the EP, it sounds more like industrial hard rock within the riffs and beats, with the vocals sounding cleaner for an ethereal tone. But it's still worth hearing...
Streetcleaner has cleared the gap between industrial and metal to form a hybrid genre that Godflesh would be known for throughout their career. However, they would later experiment with electro-dance/trip-hop sounds, similar to the new Pain of Salvation album. The main driving force of Godflesh's debut is the instrumentation. This album is the classic of all industrial metal classics and a crucial part of any industrial/metal fan's collection!
Favorites: "Like Rats", "Pulp", "Head Dirt", "Life is Easy", "Streetcleaner", "Tiny Tears", "Wound"
“Streetcleaner” is probably Godflesh’s most praised release but personally, I don’t consider it one of their best. It’s definitely their most brutal LP, and was certainly groundbreaking in 1989, so I understand why it’s held in such high regard. It also starts off VERY strong with “Like Rats” and “Christbait Rising,” the latter of which is one of Godflesh’s all time best tracks. But the rest of the songs just aren’t as good. Everything sounds awesome -the guitar break joining “Devastator” and “Mighty Trust Krusher” is creepy as hell-but most of the album just sounds like a sequence of really cool parts, but no standout songs. Also, one of my favorite elements of Godflesh is how Justin Broadrick switches from a tough, barking vocal style to a more somber melodic one. On “Streetcleaner,” he only uses the melodic vocal as a harmony for the shouts. Again, it does sound good, but I wish it wasn’t the only time it was used. My theory is the clean vocals sounded so bad on the first LP ( which I still like) that he avoided doing them again. For me, Godflesh really hit their stride with their next three albums (and concurrent eps) . This album is undeniably powerful, but I rarely revisit it other than for “Christbait Rising,” which is worth it by itself.
