Napalm Death

You know when you've been Napalmed. There's no other act on the planet like Napalm Death, and since their inception in Birmingham in the mid-1980s, their influence has marked the metal landscape like the black scar left by the flaming gas that is their namesake. They've spawned a legion of imitators, and their own family tree reads like a who's who of English metal of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

That's almost 20 years of raw aggression and fearless agitating. And over that period the band have lost little of their blinding intensity or commitment to the cause. While the recent album The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code doesn't have quite the same ground zero flash of their pioneering early recordings, it certainly kicks the asses of many of the bands younger peers. It's hard to believe in an era when retrospective navel gazing and sterile nostalgia are de rigueur, that a band of this age are still forging ahead on the same fuel that got them started.

Napalm Death's earliest albums, 1987's Scum and 1988's From Enslavement to Obliteration (both Earache Records) were insane speed fests that single handedly birthed the grindcore movement. They featured tracks that were but a few seconds long, with anything longer than a few minutes being a virtual epic. Like the Ramones, Hüsker Dü, or the Jesus and Mary Chain live, they knew that impact was everything. Armed with this, they bludgeoned their audiences into willing, ecstatic submission in short bursts of utter mayhem.

Members of Napalm Death during the early period went on to form such outfits as Cathedral (Lee Dorrian), Carcass (Bill Steer), Godflesh (Justin Broadrick, Nik Bullen), Scorn (Mick Harris). Harris, Broadrick and Bullen featured on the first side of Scum, while for the second, Harris was joined by Steer, Dorrian and Jim Whitely. The personnel changes continued into the early ‘90s, when the more secure line-up of bassist Shane Embury, vocalist Barney Greenway, drummer Danny Herrara, and guitarists Jesse Pintado and Mitch Harris.

This five-piece configuration recorded some classic albums during the mid-90s, such as Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994) and Diatribes (1996). These not only refined the extreme left-wing socio-political polemic, but also broadened the sound palette, taking in more colours than sheer white noise. "We've been taking influences from everywhere, and using them to get a more mature sound," stated Shane Embury. "We're into what bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Jane's Addiction do with their songs, and we draw on that and just make it a lot heavier." This saw the band bring more variation into their music in terms of rhythm, tempo and texture, realising that strategic changes made the extremes appear more extreme.
Welding their trademark intensity to a richer sonic sensibility has seen Napalm Death remain a vital power in the metal scene, and they're now one of the scene’s elders, admired for their unbending commitment. The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code fits comfortably into this cannon, with such anthems as 'Pay For The Privilege of Breathing', 'Our Pain Is Their Power', and 'Instruments of Persuasion'.
Opener 'Silence Is Deafening' is a clarion call to any metal practitioners who have been complacently waiting for something to happen. All the signifiers are present - the guttural, lung-blasting vocals, incorrigible blastbeats, vicious distorted low end, and manic grind riffing giving way to canyon-esque grooves. Even with just one guitarist (Pintado is no longer around) the aural assault cannot fail to get the adrenaline going. And even though Napalm Death have been playing a similar tune for the better part of two decades, it still sounds fresh. Maybe that's because the original idea was so good, or maybe it's because most of their present day contemporaries struggle to keep up.
There are cameos from Jello Biafra (‘The Great and the Good’), Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta (‘Instruments of Persuasion’, ‘Sold Short’), and Carcass vocalist Jeff Walker (‘Pledge Yourself to You’). Apart from Biafra these collaborations don’t really add much, but indicate the respect the band has.
A related project worth a listen is Bill Steer’s latest project, Firebird. Their latest opus, 2003’s No.3 (Steamhammer) is a world away from Napalm Death or Carcass, being firmly rooted in heavy 1970s blues, ala Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, even Band of Gypsies. This is raw and authentic, the kind of nostalgia trip worth wallowing in.

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