Godflesh - Streetcleaner (1989)

This has all the oily sludge of a desolate coal mine, black in its facade and billowing putrid, grey smoke into the crumbling Heaven's. Godflesh, the grim depiction of satanic Britain, where industrial buildings smoke, creak and rust, wire fences rattle in the harsh winds, and ruinous machinery gradually corrodes into the poisoned soil. This is a clanging, heavyweight monster of a record, like a shambling cage dropped from a great height and spilling forth a contents of sewer rats, broken engine parts and some salivating, gargantuan beast with cogs for eyes and corrugated iron instead of flesh.

The sculptures the band and their drum machine create are predictably grim, a degree of repetition and distortion just to make us realise that the unpretty landscape we see is never going to get much better.

'Streetcleaner', put simply, is a furnace.

7/10