Godflesh - Streetcleaner
Review: With a palette of sounds from the crumbling mechanical ruins of the world Godflesh create industrial grindcore which utilizes machines for rhythm while keeping a throaty organic voice of tone and timbre to guitar, layering feedback and harmonics with rough cut power chording to bring together the disparate components of thunderous but contemplative music. In organic veils of sound layering contextual positioning noise and notes harmonizing major themes, Godflesh thrusts a gesture of defiance in the face of the world as scenery shifts in multiple planes to reveal a hidden essence or new urgently essential path.
As if stamping together metal parts a relentless drum machine assault accompanies this music by pounding on the beat and soldering together ongoing fills of flawlessly aligned metals disintegrating in pulse and decay. Within this movable framework of rhythm bass prowls in explosive instability while guitars riff with downtuned power chords sagging into harmonizing tones, or lead playing that echoes accentuated themes while shadowing the whole in a new theme as a means of transition. Sometimes singing but often cursing the skies in the hoarse gruff death metal growl, vocalist/guitarist Justin Broadrick appears selectively to add depth to the sound but feels no compelling need toward insistent vocalization.
In the core of guitar composition, these works are based on melodic isolation, where by subtle introduction of themes songs maintain a balance before cancelling out principles of centering to the choice of tone and structure, forcing to prominence a support structure which will synthesize into the final theme. Emotional in a part-Emo and part-grindcore appeal to anger and then sadness, this work slowly builds a resonant mood across its songs, submerging the listener in harmony and then fading out into an EP of early and lesser-developed works which frame in aesthetic the mind of the listener as it interprets earlier passing songs and their waves of emotion tied to ringing, echoing, unfolding layers of sound.
Where much of industrial music became EBM adapted to violent rock guitars, Godflesh molded music from pure anarchistic sound in a highly evolved grind/hardcore methodology that fires songs from nearly nothing and expands vegetatively, covering a life cycle to match the riff cycle of its major theme before collapsing into chaos or continuity. This album endures for its compositional integrity, screaming unreflected ethic of artistic passion, and unique form of technicality which elevated the stakes for related genres. Its unrecoiling stare into the morbid sewerage of human souls and resounding determination to succeed beyond that karmic feedback loop propel its conceptual delivery into believable spaces of transcendent music.