. . .
What’s the connection between the Napalm Death of 2011 and the Napalm Death of 1981? Arguably, there is none. The membership has turned over multiple times, and the sound has drastically changed over time. Yet the band doesn’t get the same “hang it up” jeers that, say, Sepultura get. People still revere the Napalm Death discography (most of it, anyway), and they still go out to see the band. Some thread has remained from 1981. To me, that thread is a sociopolitical conscience with punk and metal roots. The world just needs a Napalm Death.
One thread hasn’t remained, though: sonic extremity. The band has settled into a semi-polished hybrid of grindcore and death metal with the occasional curveball. It’s enjoyable, but it’s not extreme. For a reminder of when Napalm Death was once considered extreme, check out the above mashup of every song from 1987’s Scum played together at once. To an extent, it confirms my theory that grindcore is one step removed from ambient music. The YouTube description credits Merzbow, but I haven’t been able to corroborate this. Regardless of authorship, the mashup has a strange beauty. You hear the record’s two lineups and recording sessions at once. 1986 and 1987 pile on top of each other, as angry voices try to fight their way through the fuzz. Gradually the din dies down, drums become intelligible, and the band becomes a band.
Or maybe it’s all just a pile of noise.
. . .
That’s really interesting. It’s like entropy in reverse. Odd how soothing it is when the title track finally quits and you can just listen to the rest of (still noisy and chaotic) “Siege of Power” in peace.
This post is everything wrong with invisible oranges. I far from hate this website, but trying to intellectualize playing every song from Scum at the same time is where I draw the line. I obviously am not represented as part of the majority of readers of this site, so from here on out, I will never again comment on any posts. Not that any of you care, since every single comment I make is completely disagreed with. But yeah, this is the point where it is clear that IO and myself are complete idealistic opposites.
Sounds like a very extreme noise set, with sheets of metal and metal barrels being clanged on while surrounded by mics and distortion pedals. I dig it.
Melt-Banana and Meshuggah have done this already…
@ Watt Par “…every single comment I make is completely disagreed with.”
Like this one? Please elaborate.
On the other hand, I still have fond memories of the first time I’ve heard Scum. At first it was hard to digest, but soon after it all made perfect sense. Still one of my favorite bands.
I love your description of grindcore being one step removed from ambient music. A good friend routinely mocks me (good naturedly) about liking grindcore. I’ve been telling him to approach it as he would drone or old industrial music and not as actual music-music, but to no avail.
@Valis – That might explain why I can’t stand the most abrassive of Grindcore. I can dig it when it’s well rooted in Death Metal or even a Punk/Hardcore structure…. but as soon as it heads toward a experimental noise sort of field I lose all interest. I’d rather hear a song than “wow, this is extreme”.
How dare you attempt to intellectualize music here let me tell you how upset I am and furthermore
File under: things I don’t understand the appeal of listening to/writing about.
John Zorny!
Watt Par – “Intellectualize” is too flattering a word! Your opinion, if civil, is certainly welcome here.
Making a big deal about saying “I’ll never post again, UGGGGH” is the equivalent of saying “I’M BETTER THAN YOU GUYS… BUT WHY WON’T YOU PAY ATTENTION TO ME?”
Buy a megaphone, you can whine louder.
“Entropy in reverse.” I like it, and a fitting description of what we have here. Don’t get me wrong… I hate this and will never listen to it again, but I did find it mildly interesting to hear how it became more and more decipherable as the track went on due to individual songs finishing. Perhaps this is the way to make a stand-alone grindcore track sound un-chaotic? By having it gradually emerge from complete sonic shitstorm into relative tranquility: The peaceful sounds of “Siege of Power,” brought to you by “Not Hearing the Cacophony of Every Other ~Scum~ Song On Top of It.” I particularly thought that “You Suffer” sounded great in this context.
Oh, how I do hate grindcore recordings. Put me into the “I don’t get it” camp, unless it’s live, and barely then. Although I did like the latest Rotten Sound to a degree. Pfft. I don’t know what to think. I do know we could use this instead of waterboarding and it would probably work. Sorry for the rambling, disjointed post.
The Melvins have done some crazy shit like this (I’m thinking, for example, of their _Chickenswitch_ “remixes,” the first track on _Electroretard_, and a bunch of the tracks on their Amrep singles series). Inveterate collector scum that I am, I own all of that stuff, and while it’s kind of interesting as an experiment in what makes a song a song, it’s pretty unlistenable. Maybe the joke is on me.
I could hold a hair dryer next to my ear,move it back n forth,turn it on n off randomly n get that exact same noise
The first half of this reminds me of Vomir, whose self-description of “harsh noise wall” is the best description out there: http://vomirhnw.blogspot.com/
Sepultura gets jeers because they make terrible boring music, Napalm Death had a brief foray into that realm in the 90’s but miraculously figured out that almost no one liked where they were going and did an about face back towards radness…more bands should learn how to do this after album #5!
To be fair, it also probably has something to do with ND being two different line-ups from their first album, and a lack of stupid drama that Sepultura has managed to carry over into two decades.
That said, the fact that this video exists and you were compelled to write about it shows that most people clearly have entirely too much time on their hands.
What I was getting at was that I feel like my opinion is much too far removed from that of the average reader of this site and by providing it I am doing much more harm than good by seeming like a troll even when I’m not trolling.
FNA!
Watt Par – Average people are overrated. Also, as noted in the year-end list mania, even my own tastes are far removed from those of this site’s “average reader”. I really wouldn’t worry about the opinions of a bunch of people you’ve never met. I don’t – that’s how I can do this site.
I’ll never understand why those guys who released Harmony Corruption retained the name Napalm Death. They were playing death metal fer crissakes! There was a slight return to grind when they released Utopia Banished, and then went full on into death metal and then a bunch of… weird stuff? (yes, I recognize that I am using an elipsis. Annoying. Isn’t it?). Then they came back and built a new career on Utopia Banished type stuff.
I’m a fan of most of this stuff. Barney, Shane, Mitch and Danny are awesome dudes. I just wish it had all been done under a different moniker. They deserve to have their own legacy rather than some tenuous link back to highly revered extreme music. I wonder how they feel about it.
@ Watt Par – At least you’re trying to make your point in a polite way, unlike some Neanderthals on other metal sites. Different opinions expressed in a civil way are the key to productive discussion.
I honestly can’t fathom why some people tend to confuse mere entertainment with pseudo intellectual postures. Music is music and must be taken at face value. Some readers here adopt such arrogant postures that are boring to read (not that my poor English writing is even interesting).
I don’t understand why “intellectualizing” music is so bad. I certainly find certain attempts at it highly irritating (I’m looking at you, Liturgy), I fail to see what purpose totally avoiding it would serve. If everybody just took music at face value, then music would have no meaning, it would just be a collection of sounds that may or may not be pleasing to hear. I believe that to take such an approach to any art form is to deny credit to the artists that put so much (or so little) of themselves into their creation.
Music is just entertainment? Maybe to some people, but it is a poverty that any form of expression could be considered nothing more than that.
i’ll second the zorn-y nod, with a touch of nurse with wound “sinister whimsy”.
would have been neat to just glue the last four or five seconds onto the space where the two final overlaps wrap up, but that may be overthinking it a tad.
I find the grindcore vs all-other-metal schism fascinating. Perhaps due to the roundabout way I found metal (industrial to punk/hardcore to 90’s metalcore to METAL) I never considered grind vastly different than black or death metal. Sure, I won’t rock an Anal Cunt discography, but I don’t listen to Mortician either, and it has nothing to do with genre.
The Napalm Death all-at-once exercise comes a lot closer to noise (that unverified Merzbow tag makes perfect sense), which isn’t really my thing, but it can be fun in the right context. It’s hard to listen to, in the sense that’s it’s fully abstract and meant to annoy, but some of the early ‘power electronics’ stuff like Whitehouse can be a cool change of pace. Considering how many open-minded metalheads are into drone (i.e. the boring alter-ego of noise), I don’t see why noise is such an offensive stretch of the imagination.
I’m on the other end of the spectrum from Watt Par. I love this site, and as a faculty member at a university, revel in every opportunity to be academic about music (metal in particular). I only hope IO keeps up with these sorts of posts when Cosmo steps aside.
Sounds like someone amplified gravity severely and sped up rain.
Love how organic it still sounds.
Miskatonic – i dunno man, i always thought that everything Napalm Death did was pretty a pretty natural evolution from something before. if Harmony Corruption had actually had an insanely sick non-stuffy production (imagine if it sounded like Mentally Murdered, or if it sounded like Left Hand Path like Mick Harris wanted it to sound) i think people would’ve received it way better. even the “lost” stuff from the mid 90s, while extremely different compared to Scum, makes sense when you consider their tastes. Napalm have ALWAYS championed different stuff – read interviews from the 80s and 90s and they’ve talked about listening to Young Gods, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Barney is a HUGE power metal fan, Swans, Diamanda Galas, Killing Joke, Jesus Lizard, etc. etc. etc.
i’m glad they went back to Utopia Banished-style stuff too, but i always at least appreciated what they did on those “strange” albums. always felt like the “Napalm” spirit to me.
“i dunno man, i always thought that everything Napalm Death did was pretty a pretty natural evolution from something before.”
As a Napalm Death fan since the early 90’s I’d definately agree. The continuity is mixed and they’ve definately faltered in the mid/late 90’s with a bad album and 2 average ones; but after and including Enemy of the Music business ND have just got better and better and much more refined. But in each case it was evolution.
If you listen to one after another this definately shows.
ND is not as cutting edge as Rotten Sound or as aggressive as Nasum or as raw as Brutal Truth but they are the kings of grindcore in my mind and continue to be so. Since 2000 they’ve release increasing better albums and one is due this year and can’t wait. And yes, by any measure, they are still extreme but do it now in a really refined manner.
This:
“Napalm have ALWAYS championed different stuff – read interviews from the 80s and 90s and they’ve talked about listening to Young Gods, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Barney is a HUGE power metal fan, Swans, Diamanda Galas, Killing Joke, Jesus Lizard, etc. etc. etc.”
The closest parallel to Napalm Death in the non-metal world that I can think of is Sonic Youth. SY has always pushed other bands from all over the map, gotten involved in side projects that weren’t strictly within the parameters of their primary band’s genre, put out records by bands they like on their own nickel, etc., thereby expanding the horizons of fans who wanted to be led into something else. Napalm has been much the same. When I was a teenager listening to ND in the 80s and early 90s I used to treat the thanks lists in their records as a guide for further listening (which I assume they always intended). Given that, and the involvement of the band’s members and former members in so many other ventures, I think you can make a case that ND is one of the most influential bands not just in metal but in music, period, over the last 20 years.
i suffer. this is why.
cool as find though.
@Watt Par
You don’t find it at all interesting the way it sounds when the songs all bleed out and leak away until suddenly it makes something that would have been considered abrasive seem downright clear and relieving? It’s playing with perspectives. It’s not fucking entertainment, it’s just an interesting idea that actually does offer an interesting slant on the music as it progresses.
I don’t think there was any intellectualizing going on there, though I see how it could be construed that way.