Streetcleaner, a work purveyed by Justin Boardrick of the current Hydra Head recording outfit, Jesu, is pure texture. Guitars surge like deep ocean swells; slow and damning. "Machine" spews out beats that toggle from tick to crash with no warning. The vocals are distilled to distorted, doom-mantras like, "You breed/ like rats," or "Don't hold me back/ This is my own hell." In the 1980s when speed and intricacy were the musical traits held in the highest esteem, Godflesh choose to reveal themselves in gradual, leveling eruptions of sound.
Inventors of the short-lived grindcore genre, Godflesh stripped death metal of its vocal barks, riffs, and gaudy drums while at the same time, besting its brutality. In so doing they polarized metal fans and gained new support in hardcore, industrial, and goth circles. The music; thick, bleak, and repetitive, somehow evokes lucid imagery like silent vampire films, scorched expanses of forest at twilight, and grey, windowless buildings seconds before implosion. This crafted atmosphere of utter devastation is masterful through the record's first side. It's only when we flip the wax that the results become a bit more sorted. Side two, recorded in a separate studio session, adds to the mix a second guitarist, Paul Neville, as well as slabs of sampling. In some cases, the broadened sound works; "Devastator/Mighty Trust Krusher" drips with urgent guitar shrills reminiscent of noise-metal heroes, the Swans, and "Life is Easy" barges out of the speakers with minimalist riffing. As we reach the title track and the closing, "Locust Furnace," however, Streetcleaner loses its sense of thick minimalism and descends back toward other death metal efforts. On these tracks, the riffing becomes prominent, and the growling-vox effects become contrived. None of this is to say that these tracks are weak, rather this more traditional approach brings the listener out of the horror and into the mosh pit. The apt noise-mongering grows that much easier to catalogue and falls into territory ventured by the likes of Meshuggah and Burzum.
Justin Boardrick would return to the magnificence explored on Streetcleaner's first side with the Godflesh follow-up, Pure and then embark toward more rhythmically-charged efforts with the Ice and God projects, before creating Jesu. Some may find it odd that the mastermind behind Godflesh could make the transition to a project such as Jesu which is lathered in melody. But, I have an inkling that to Boardrick, music is simply sheets of sound; obscuring both the good and bad, the sweet and deteriorated.
