Streetcleaner at 30

I must not let the day go by without mentioning another anniversary. 30 years ago today, Earache unleashed Godflesh's debut long-player Streetcleaner and the world was never the same again. Actually I didn't catch up with the album until 1991 after hearing the title track on Earache's Grindcrusher compilation and I immediately sought out the album (on cassette if my memory serves me right). Streetcleaner is often spoken about as a landmark metal album, but at the time, it didn't sound like any kind of metal I had heard, with its abrasive, screeching guitars, thudding bass and the clean, mechanical precision of the computer-programmed drum beats. Godflesh was evolving fast: by the time Streetcleaner was cut, the band had shaken off the Swans influences heard on the eponymous 6-track EP recorded the year earlier, and the group would move even further out with the subsequent Slavestate recordings. In many ways Godflesh heralded the beginning of the end of my teenage metal years - the music of John Zorn's Painkiller, and Mick Harris' post Napalm Death excursions into isolationism and dub seemed far more interesting than the next Morbid Angel and Deicide albums. When Godflesh's 1992 album Pure came out Justin Broadrick was talking about the influence of hip-hop and Eric B. & Rakim's Paid in Full on the music and it sent me down new avenues of investigation that no longer seemed compatible with death metal. And astonishingly Broadrick was just 20 years old when Streetcleaner was recorded.