Available on black vinyl.
What needs to be said about Streetcleaner that hasn't already been put on the books? We all revel in the enormous blissed-out sludge and shoegazy metallic rock of Jesu, and I'm a pretty solid mark for anything that Justin Broadrick has had his hands in over the years (Final, Ice, Techno Animal, etc.), but it all comes back to THIS. After forming the pioneering grindcore band Napalm Death and recording a portion of their first album Scum, Broadrick made his way through the industrial rock of Head Of David and then hooked up with G.C. Green to form Godflesh. I remember when Streetcleaner came out in 1989, it was possibly the heaviest thing I had ever heard up to that point, a crushing concoction of booming drum machine beats that moved from tick-tock mechanical rhythms and militant martial snare beats to crushing breakbeats, with bludgeoning, simplistic riffs and squealing harmonics welded together above the pounding percussive attack and huge bass-heavy bottom end. Everything about this record was terrifying: the cover artwork of legions of crucified men in front of a towering wall of fire, a still taken from Ken Russell's legendary Altered States, to the rigid, fearsome music and thoroughly unfriendly vocals inside, and the song titles that evoke grim images of dystopian horror and technological annihilation like "Christbait Rising", "Like Rats", and "Locust Furnace". Definitely THE album to start with if you are a newcomer to Godflesh's nuclear-strength industrial metal. This CD version of Streetcleaner also contains four bonus songs that were initially intended for an EP that never materialized, included here at the end.

Totally essential.