Demo-lition Derby: Chemical Tomb

My attorney has never been able to accept the notion -- often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation -- that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them.
And neither have I, for that matter.
Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
1971 

Chemical Tomb
Promo 2012
At its most basic, life is just chemistry. We may be nothing but stardust, but the fun comes from all those little cosmic particles you call you colliding around space and time. For some, like the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, life’s particle interactions were made all the more enjoyable by taking, often illicit, chemical detours.
England’s Chemical Tomb, who dice up their latest demo with retrospectively hilarious samples from anti-drug ads of yore (including one that provides the band their name) pursue the high life with a lo-fi wad of blink and you’ll miss them grindcore darts. The production sometimes fights them (that snare is determined to drown out everything else), but Chemical Tomb take swipes at the Agathocles, Insect Warfare and Wormrot back catalogs while bringing in something blockier and more brutish.
However, these Brits have a tendency to get caught up in the all-blasting-all-the-time attack mode, which blurs some of their stuff together, lessening its impact. On a positive note, the middle and end of “Cadaver Dogs” sees them stretching their artists' legs a tad to create something more evocative. It harnesses a twisting riff to a driving punk beat and a singer gnawing at your heels like a pack of hungry dogs. Just that much of a tempo shift is enough to give the song breathing space and atmosphere. They manage to pull everything together best on the churning “Malfunction,” which strikes the perfect balance between aggression and art.
Chemical Tomb haven’t consistently put all the pieces together yet, but with better musical editing they have the tools to demonstrate their fear and loathing on the Thames.

Demo-lition Derby: Acid Shark

Acid Shark
Bombs Away
Soundcloud
Acid Shark’s Amebixed punk sounds very British. At least in the way that movies have conditioned Americans to think about our colonial cousins. The Britishosity (totally a word, I swear) rests largely on the singer’s voice, which sounds like someone who routinely employs English colloquialisms like “Oi!” and “Right you are, luv” in between calling for a pint of bitter at the quaint local pub in a decidedly blue collar swath of smoke-choked London. Please none of you disabuse me of this stereotype because it makes Acid Shark that much more fun.
Reinforcing that British charm is that Acid Shark’s three songs sound like Amebix if the crusty forefathers had jettisoned all that maudlin crap about friends dying in motorcycle accidents to pen more bangers in the mold of “Arise!” Acid Shark will not overwhelm your senses with either their musical or lyrical originality (especially lyrical—songs largely consist of the title being shouted repeatedly), but it’s a fun little demo. The songs all have a propulsive vibe, like Acid Shark is rushing to the end before they collapse in on themselves. The knotty guitars have a twisty little crunch to them, though the drums occasional blur into flapping mush.
At only three songs, Acid Shark’s demo does what it should. Namely, it encapsulates a rousing football hooligan spirit not so much in a rioting down the road sense as it is kicking back an ale with a few mates after a rousing match. Essentially, Acid Shark know how to tease just enough to make you want to hear more.

G&P Review: Napalm Death (Post #666!)

We walked along Beaufort Avenue to the centre of the estate. The herb gardens, the cheerful children's rooms filled with sensible toys, the sounds of teenagers at violin practice, were given an odd spin by the notion of imminent revolt. Most revolutionaries in the last century had aspired to exactly this level of affluence and leisure, and it occurred to me that I was seeing the emergence of a higher kind of boredom.

J.G. Ballard
Millennium People
2003

The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world...

J.G. Ballard
Kingdom Come
2006

Napalm Death
Utilitarian
Century Media
When it came time for Napalm Death to record their fourteenth album, Utilitarian, apparently not a single fuck was given the day they hit the studio. After 20 years together, the current lineup has enough confidence in their grind-inflected death metal to fully indulge every musical digression that came to mind. The result, surprisingly, is their strongest album since Smear Campaign, and possibly of their post-Earache oeuvre.
From the Swans churn of opener "Circumspect," the Dimension Hatröss vocals of "The Wolf I Feed" and the saxual assault of Everyday Pox," courtesy of avant-jazz nutbar John Zorn, Napalm Death spread their musical wings further than ever. But between all of that, they've set to tape the most concise and focused death-grind tracks of their last decade. The rollicking "Collision Course," a fulminating ball of spite, is destined to be a live set standard and the 65 seconds of "Nom de Guerre" is the most pointed we've heard these Birmingham bangers have been since Lee Dorrian decided to trip back into the '70s.
Utilitarian finds Napalm Death sounding punchier than they've been in years. There's a jaunty spring to the quartet's step you wouldn't expect from a bunch of middle aged guys who still cling to death metal so tenaciously. Particularly reinvigorated is Danny Herrera whose thumping is somewhat shortchanged by a production job that stifles the snare drum, but the toms shudder with brain-rattling force. Over top him, Mitch Harris has never sounded so catchy as he bangs out one great crust-inflected riff after another. Mark "Barney" Greenway's phlegmy roar is augmented and counterpointed by new screams courtesy of his bandmates. However, Napalm Death's recent fondness for chanting gets way overused on Utilitarian in one of the few false steps.
Even if Utilitarian violates the 30 minutes or less rule, Napalm Death do their best to earn every extra second of their 48 minute runtime with an renewed intensity that makes me think they might have another 20 years in them.

Weekend Punk Pick: Subhumans

Ok, it's that Subhumans this time (not to be confused with that other Subhumans). I've been binging on old British '80s punk lately and outside of Rudimentary Peni, I can't think of a better example. Strident, scathing and uncompromising, Subhumans were a political timebomb of anti-religious sentiment, animal rights sloganeering and two fingers in the air anarchy. They were also pretty prescient, predicting the rise of the surveillance state. After a brief sojourn through the ska wilderness of Citizen Fish, the Subs are back and spitting more bile.

Demo-lition Derby: Extreme Mental Abuse

I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
1910

Extreme Mental Abuse
Extreme Mental Abuse
There’s an unfortunate hollowness to both the conception and execution of Extreme Mental Abuse, a side project of Mark Magill of the band SSS. The 20 songs, banged out in 18 minutes, feel rote, as though this were an exercise in genre rather than an honest expression of some innate emotion. Combining Unseen Terror’s infamous bumblebee guitar tone with Excruciating Terror-style attack, Extreme Mental Abuse rail against “Corrupt Government,” “First World Tyranny” and “One World Government,” falling back on conceits that have grown contemptible with familiarity, passed through the hands of several generations of likeminded musicians.
I could forgive well worn lyrics if the music gave me that necessary adrenal jolt, but Extreme Mental Abuse just lack any sense of urgency. While the occasional tune like “Global Stratospheric Obliteration” slams crust into grind like a punk-based Large Hadron Collider, releasing sparks of energy, the rest of the album largely feels monotonous and one-dimensional, lashed to a rickety sounding drum (machine?).
There’s a lot of grind getting banged out all across the globe these days, so it’s going to take a lot to stand out from the slavering hordes of blastbeaten barbarians. This just isn’t lighting up my mojo. You can check it out for yourself at Extreme Mental Abuse’s Bandcamp page.

Fear of Napalm(isms): Grind Waits for No Slave

Napalm Death shocked the shit outta me during the recent tournament. Out of 32 bands, the venerable British institution placed third – keeping in mind my dictate that the band had to be evaluated based on its current merits and not be allowed to lounge on decades old glories that were sieged by other people’s power. Hell, I thought pitting them against Agathocles in the first round would be a clever little joke to play on a band that has often strayed far from the roots of the style it embodies (in most people’s minds).
We all love Napalm Death in some form or another, right? But I was surprised to find out people love the current version as much as they do because I’m not really sure it's accurate any more to label them a grind band.
So that’s the question I’ve spent the last few months really pondering as I dug back into some of the more awkward annals of the band’s history – like that period after Harmony Corruption but before their post-Earache rejuvenation.
And here’s the thing, post-From Enslavement to Obliteration, Napalm Death has graced us with 11 full length albums of original material. But of those, only three, at least to my thinking, qualify as actual grindcore records: Utopia Banished (which some of you already dispute), Enemy of the Music Business and Order of the Leech. That's only 27 percent.
The rest drift through phases of death metal and crusty grind-lite with varying levels of success. Smear Campaign is probably only of my favorite recent album. Inside the Torn Apart, granted not recorded under the best of circumstances, is a blast beat-free blight on my record collection that I’m perfectly happy to never hear again but can’t bear to throw out. Diatribes used to have a soft spot in my heart, but the poppy production has soured my appreciation for it (instead, I recommend getting their collection of BBC recordings where the band – short Mitch Harris, who had the flu – just destroy songs like “Greed Killing”). Fear, Emptiness Despair and Words From the Exit Wound (aka the screaming face albums) are, respectively, short on blast beats or given to really unnecessary experimentation. Seriously, I can live a pretty contented life without Barney trying his tonsils at clean vocals ever again.
Shane Embury has credited Nasum with kicking the band in the ass and setting them back on the path of true grind with the Spitfire duo of Enemy of the Music Business and Order of the Leech, but while the former was a joyous return to adrenaline and aggression, the latter fell a bit flat, like a carbon copy of a better record. It just lacked some spunk and spark.
That spark was short lived because the band’s trio of albums for Century Media has seen it drifting into another experimental phase, mixing Amebix crust with Voivod thrash with scattershot results; again, Smear Campaign kicks ass, but the Code is Red … Long Live the Code seemed like Fear, Emptiness, Despair v. 2 and Time Waits for No Slave was nearly a damn hour long and could use the ministrations of a ruthless editor.
I’ve been kicking this around for quite a few months now, and I’m not sure I can really come to a conclusion. Napalm Death seems at once to be a band that is both something more and something less than you can sum up by labeling it grindcore. Unable to work this one out for myself, I toss the question out to you: Is Napalm Death still a grindcore band? A lot of you and a lot of folks over at Cosmo's digs seem to think so.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Heresy

Heresy’s supporters can be distinguished by five indicators. First, there are those who visit heretics secretly when they are in prison; second, those who lament their capture and have been their intimate friends (it is, in fact, unlikely that one who has spent much time with a heretic remains ignorant of his activity); third, those who declare the heretics have been unjustly condemned, even when their guilt has been proved; fourth, those who look askance and criticize those who persecute heretics and preach against them successfully, and this can be discovered from the eyes, nose, the expression they try to conceal, showing hatred toward those for whom they feel bitterness and love toward those whose misfortune grieves them; the fifth sign, finally, is the fact that they collect the charred bones of burned heretics and make them an object of veneration.

Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose
1980

Heresy
Face Up to It
In Your Face
1988
The period between high school and college is full of transitions. Way back in the Pleistocene (aka the mid-1990s) I not only transitioned myself the hell out of my parents’ house and into the dorm, but I was also phasing my musical consumption from punk and aggressive thrash to a diet of grindcore, courtesy of a cassette borrowed from a friend (the TDK 90 minute tape being the file sharing of the era) that had Suicidal Tendencies’ first album on one side and something called Utopia Banished by the punk-sounding-named Napalm Death on the other. Having recently had my mind blown by Napalm Death’s back catalogue, I found Heresy's Face Up to It sitting in the $3 vinyl bin at the truly amazing Rebound Records (RIP). Recognizing the name from a plethora of album thank you lists (something I still rely on for musical inspiration) I plopped down a fiver (also finding Possessed’s Beyond the Gates in the $2 cassette section). What I blindly picked up was a landmark grind/punk classic from that era when Drop Dead became Scum (with just a tad of Gate of Doom crossover thrash for lube). This is classic pre-grind. Proto, if you will.
Punk girth and grind acceleration getting up in hardcore’s grill. Right off the top the band blasts and snarls its way through “Consume” while frontman John snarls like a surly, British Keith Morris. The title track is even more traditional hardcore, making those connections back to punk even more explicit, but dominating the album is the sprawling “Flowers in Concrete” flails through punk, proto-grind, spoken word and is that a hint of hip hop bounce in the middle? The intro riff is pure “Jealous Again” worship while much of the song could have been outtakes from an early Napalm Death rehearsal tape.
Art by pastiche luminary/Dead Kennedys collaborator John Yates and a grimy, gritty aesthetic round out one of the less discussed offshoots of the early grind family tree. I understand Boss Tuneage recently scraped some of the scuzz off the mix and reissued Face Up to It, but I can’t imagine why you would bother. It’s a beautifully punk mess just as it is.

G&P Review: Joe Pesci

Joe Pesci
At Our Expense!
Bones Brigade
Joe Pesci are funny how? I mean, funny like a clown. They amuse you? They make you laugh? Like they’re fucking here to amuse you? What do you mean they’re funny? How are they funny? How the fuck are they funny? What the fuck is so funny about them? Tell me, tell what’s funny?
Oh, you mean these Brits write grindcore with a sly, sarcastic and at times hysterical sheen? Yeah, I can see that. I mean I giggle at “Sticking My Carbon Footprint Up Your Arse” and “Mindless Zombified Fucks” as much as the next guy. And the grind and audio pastiche of “Beating Robert Mugabe to Death…” is not just an amusing listen but also a nice real world recommendation. Grind-wise, “Project 2501” is a Ghost in the Shell referencing bitchslap that sounds like firing high velocity rounds through a too small breach.
What’s not a laughing matter, unfortunately, is the wildly uneven production that’s rather astonishing for a Bones Brigade release. And that’s where At Our Expense! goes horrifically off the rails. Every great moment the band crafts is smothered under sub-demo quality production. The guitars are heavy but lack any texture or nuance. All that’s left is a slurred mess of indecipherable passing trains roar. There very well may be a killer band under all this muck, but damned if you’ll be able to tell by listening to At Our Expense!
Not Narcosis bad, but that’s a pretty low bar. It’s kind of like saying you’re the tallest guy in Munchkin land. Unfortunately, there’s nothing here Jesus Crost didn’t already do better this year. Turns out it was all at my expense.
For a dissenting opinion, see here.

Fear of Napalm(isms): Say My Name, Say My Name

I am absolutely awful with song titles. Case in point, I was recently surprised by just how many I didn’t recognize on World Downfall. I shudder to think of how many times I’ve listened to that album in my life without “Whirlwind Struggle” piercing my consciousness.
As you can imagine, it’s a real handicap for somebody who loves to obsessively write, think and talk about music. My problem is only exacerbated by my love of grindcore, which places a premium on cramming a bazillion songs onto a 3-inch CD each gurgled out by a pitch-shifted tapir with impacted sinuses. But Karl Marx bless Napalm Death for giving inattentive shlubs like me a way out. Between Barney Greenway’s powerful but clear ogre roar and the undercurrent of underappreciated verse/chorus hardcore that has always girded their songwriting, I can generally make an educated guess as to what any given song’s title might be.
I’ve come to praise pop-influenced songwriting not to bury it.
Punk has always been about stripping away the dross that weighs down pop music, and somewhere during the evolution from hardcore to grind niceties like catchy verses and choruses were deemed expendable. But a funny thing happened when the band that laid grindcore’s cornerstone started wandering off into death metal pastures, discernable versus started oozing back into their songwriting and have remained a fixture of the band’s post-Earache renaissance.
Oh sure, even I’ve mocked Napalm Death for an over reliance on clichés (Time Waits for No Slave, mercifully platitude free!), but even a shopworn bromide like “When All is Said and Done” could power a spiraling Jacob’s ladder of a tune on Smear Campaign. Ditto millennial return to form Enemy of the Music Business and “Necessary Evil.” Even during the band’s creative nadir, an album like Words from the Exit Wound, for which I harbor an unabashed fondness, or Inside the Torn Apart, which I loathe, would be elevated by the headbanging, scream-along ear candy of “Next of Kin to Chaos” or “Breed to Breathe,” which were motored by an elusive mixture of catchy riffing and a gripping chorus.
The most stunning thing about a “Greed Killing” or “Instruments of Persuasion” is that they exist at all. Napalm Death, albeit with different constituents, embodied and championed the notion of shearing a song down to its – occasionally absurd – essentials. But having popped a creative Viagra at the fin de the most recent ciecle, Napalm Death are challenging the strictures they laid down. Napalm Death now prove that grindcore, often mocked at pointless thrashing by the more “musical” offshoots of the punk and metal trees, can be just as involved and downright enjoyable as the most tightly focus grouped pop tune without ever compromising on the extremity.

Carcass Word of the Day Calendar: April 17, 2009

I am a hot chocolate fiend.
The greatest gift my wife ever game me during our courting years was a really nice home hot cocoa maker. I love that machine. Each winter I fire it up just about nightly and guzzle a pot of gourmet chocolate by myself. And other than sending Wilford Brimley into diabetic shock, I never expected my wintry addiction would have any serious health effects until my doc did a routine blood test during my most recent check up and cautioned me my calcium levels were off the charts. Barring an immediate change in diet, she said, I ran the risk of developing kidney stones. My dad caught a bad bout of the stones when I was a kid and I can honestly say, Carcass’ “Manifestation of Verrucose Urethra” from Reek of Putrefaction comes pretty damn close to describing the pain I witnessed. So for the inaugural Carcass calendar for 2009, let’s marvel at the sheer density of sesquipedalian verbiage the band managed to cram into a brief song that answers that age old question, Why does it burn when I pee?

Bloody hypertrophy of papillae spewing urethritis like urticaria
Septicaemia filled dermis scorched by acidic uric nocturia.
Verrucose urethra
Glutenous condyloma
Ureterocoeles excreting warm, decaying, cystic pemphigus
Gnawing at flesh with rancid uraturial lust.

Hypertrophy – n. abnormal enlargement of an organ.
Papillae – n. small nipple-like protrustions.
Urethritis – n. inflammation of the urethra.
Urticaria – n. a transient skin allergy characterized by pale or reddened irregular, elevated patches and severe itching.
Septicemia – n. a persistent blood-borne bacterial infection.
Uric – adj. of or pertaining to or derived from urine.
Nocturia – n. night time urination.
Verrucose – adj. studded with wart-like protuberances.
Glutenous – adj. like gluten, a wheat-based adhesive
Condyloma – n. yet another wart-like protuberance, usually on the anus or genitals.
Ureterocoeles – n. a congenital abnormality of the bladder in which the distal ureter balloons at its opening into the bladder, forming a sac-like pouch.
Cystic – adj. pertaining to have cysts.
Pemphigus – n. any of several fatal skin diseases characterized by blisters on the skin and mucous membranes.
Uraturial – not a word, but presumably an adjective that means some how related to a hunger for urine.

G&P review: Extreme Noise Terror

Extreme Noise Terror
Law of Retaliation
Deepsix/Osmose
According to Metal Archives, 21 people have cycled through Extreme Noise Terror since 1985 (including a couple of slumming Napalm Deathers during snits with their day jobs) in a merry go round of musicians that would give Spinal Tap pause. But it was the addition one man – beloved frontman Phil Vane returned to the fold – that seems to have single handedly revived the English band with the Engrish name from its recent doldrums.
Free of the death metal malaise that came with the ill-advised swapping of vocalists with Napalm Death, these hardcore suicide bombers kickstart a holocaust in your head with a refreshing brickbat of grind on Law of Retaliation. It’s the sound of a band putting aside past differences and rediscovering the common love of acceleration that united them initially.
A searing diatribe against the ills of the world – particularly religion. By “Spit on Your Dreams,” the third song in, Vane et al take a cue from The Exorcist and advocate using a crucifix as a makeshift sex toy. While more restrained, “Religion is Fear” and “Believe What I Say” are not much kinder to worshippers’ imaginary friends.
When Vane and fellow barker Dean Jones aren’t spitting bile over the world, ENT is kicking out the jams with filthy, crusty grind that could have been recorded any time in the last 20 years.
Just as tenacious as their nation’s bulldog mascot, these grubby English gentlemen, along with countrymen Napalm Death, dispel and notion that the U.K.’s old grind guard is somehow slouching toward its dotage.

G&P review: Napalm Death

Napalm Death
Time Waits for No Slave
Century Media
Napalm Death seem intent on proving they have nothing left to prove to grind a quarter century after the band essentially invented (or at least labeled and popularized) grindcore.
Free of the pressure to be the most extreme extremity that ever extremed, Napalm Death give reign to some of the other influences that have haunted the peripheries of their songwriting on 13th studio effort Time Waits for No Slave. And this time out the Voivod and Amebix DNA comes to the fore. On the whole Napalm mix up the tempos more this outing, comfortably cruising at crust punk speeds and using the blast beats more as accent points.
Barney reliably remains the most dominant frontman in metal and the band is hitting with a machine-like efficiency as they carve their way through 50 minutes of new material, further streamlining and refining the sound they’ve chased on their two prior Century albums.
“On the Brink of Extinction” brims with thrash triplets and “Life and Limb” could have stepped out of time capsule from Fear, Emptiness, Despair, clutching from punk chug to its blasterpiece theater close. The titular song brings back the Gregorian chanting vocals that laced Smear Campaign’s “Freedom is the Wage of Sin,” mixing up the layered, clean voices with an industrial refrain. “A No-Sided Argument” even sees Mitch Harris whip out a guitar solo that alone is worth the price of admission.
While the cameos that cluttered up the previous two albums have been left on the cutting room floor (“This album contains no cameos, thank you very fucking much,” according to the liner notes), Napalm Death don’t seem to be content to merely rehash their salad days, so if you’re waiting for FETO or Utopia Banished 2.0 this album isn’t for you. If, instead, you’re willing to take the journey with a band that’s unshackled by the need to please, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.
However, in one sign the old dogs learned a few new tricks, the band did finally manage to release a post-Earache album completely devoid of cliché song titles. That’s worth giving it a listen right there.

G&P review: Narcosis

Narcosis
Best Served Cold
Earache
The Narcosis boys could really learn a few lessons in P.R. Slogging through their meandering liner notes to discography Best Served Cold, I’m left with the impression they didn’t particularly care for most of their recordings, they couldn’t hold a line up together and that the band never had a clear identity or vision. But I guess if you’re reading that, they’ve already got your $15 so the joke’s on you.
Time was when Earache equaled quality grind. If you’re nostalgic and think Best Served Cold marks some return to the glory days of 1989, you’re going to be disappointed. I couldn’t tell you the last Earache album I bought and I’m beginning to remember why.
These young Brits clearly imbibed Napalm Death and Unseen Terror with their mother’s milk and a few pints of bitter, and while they make an adequate racket and near sound barrier speeds, I just never get a firm sense of who or what Narcosis were actually trying to be and after reading their liner notes, I’m not sure they ever had a clue either.
While Narcosis in various incarnations was a deliciously bass-heavy grind outfit, they just never gelled as songwriters to make their particular brand of noise compelling, especially on the 10 minutes spent feeding a gerbil into a woodchipper that was “With a Sickening Thud.”
Lame attempts at ha-ha funny song titles that even a post-coma Seth Putnam would leave on the cutting room floor (“If Being a Cunt was People, You’d be China,” “Just Because They Say Christ When You Walk Into a Room Doesn’t Make You Jesus”) just come off as tired and derivative. While, the faux Carcass and Man Is the Bastard artwork inside is indeed clever it’s just one more symptom of the same disease.
Too often this overlong collection becomes the grindcore equivalent of elevator music: something that just buzzes in the background.
While Best Served Cold is certainly economical in these tough times, dishing up nearly 80 minutes of grind over 51 tracks, only the songs from the Romance album, which are smartly placed front and center, are really going to be worth repeated listening. Many of the EP and horrifically tinny live tracks collected here also just regurgitate songs you may or may not have heard the first go round. Really, how many versions of “Screaming I Hate You While I Slit My Own Throat” does one person need?
Money’s tight these days so Brutalex has agreed to share. Save your ducats.

The Thing That Should Not Be: Carcass

The band: To say you were there when a new musical movement gnawed its way out of the womb like a fetal zombie is a rare accomplishment, but Carcass can claim grindcore, death metal, melodic death and even death ‘n’ roll as progeny. The Liverpuddlians dropped five studio albums over their rather brief career, each an interesting, engaging evolutionary step beyond the previous. But then there was Swansong.

The album: Oh, the album we all love to hate. After Earache and Columbia’s abortive attempt to shove death metal into the mainstream, Swansong became the poster child for perceived efforts to neuter the music and make it more palatable to the MTV set.
Through no fault of his own, Carlo Regadas was no Michael Amott, and nothing he could do would ever win over disaffected fans, especially in the face of Swansong’s awful sounding guitars (though they are heavier than I remember, it’s not the overblown sound I associate with Carcass). Even Ken Owen’s drumming lost all of its verve here, becoming another stale, play-the-beat rock performance. “Corporeal Jigsore Quandray,” this ain’t.
But the largest disappoint, for me, is lyrical. Carcass was the only metal band to really revel in language. They had an almost Dead Kennedys kind of appreciation for witty word play, and Swansong unleashed enough bad puns to fill a respectable episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle. But a decade and a half later, sneering pop culture references to MTV’s lame Rock the Vote, bad Neil Young songs and the marketing phenomenon formerly known as Generation X just come off as incredibly dated and irrelevant.

The verdict: As the recent reunion attests, Swansong was probably not the way Carcass wanted to go out, but with a few years’ perspective, I can see some of the death ‘n’ rollers giving this a second, more charitable listen. But since Heartwork tries my patience these days, I’ll just give Reek of Putrefaction and Symphonies of Sickness another spin.

The Thing That Should Not Be: Napalm Death

Because I am a complete fucking masochist, I have been repeatedly subjecting myself to some of the worst albums some of the most foundational grind bands ever shat into existence lately, torturing my innocent ears to decide if there are any redeeming qualities to be found.

The band: Oh sure Siege, Repulsion and Cryptic Slaughter were all dabbling in grind’s then-unnamed primordial ooze before Napalm Death came along, but it wasn’t until the Birmingham bangers that anybody put the whole package together and, through some canny marketing, injected the terms grindcore and blast beat into the modern lexicon. But just because you laid a corner stone for a new musical movement doesn’t mean I’ll excuse truly awful singing and lazy, disinterested song writing.

The album: Is Barney in the band? Is Barney out of the band? The title of 1997’s Inside the Torn Apart can be read pretty literally because Napalm Death seemed like it might be on the verge of imploding after frontman Mark Greenway left/was fired from the band and lit out for the greener pastures of Extreme Noise Terror. Once he was coaxed back in the fold, the band unleashed what has to be the worst album in their storied career. Even Colin Richardson’s production was monochromatic and enervated, sapping the effort of any emotion.
I don’t begrudge anybody their experimentation, but Inside the Torn Apart was the unthinkable: a Napalm Death album almost devoid of blast beats or any semblance of their grind glory days. Instead it was a flaccid, murky combination of hardcore and meandering metal that just never seemed to click. Oh sure, it started off strong enough. “Breed to Breathe” is a fairly rocking tune if you dig Diatribes and “Greed Killing,” but things quickly soured over the remaining half an hour or so. Whatever sick bastard brain farted the idea of clean vocals on the title track should be dragged out behind the remains of the Mermaid and beaten senseless by rude boys. This is Napalm Death at an absolute low point, though, incongruously, the song “Lowpoint” is the tune on Torn Apart to feature blast beats and some semblance of grind. “Prelude” is also another rare bright spot, a d-beat (briefly blasted) assault that could have graced Mentally Murdered.
Though I kept buying all of Napalm’s albums (and I admit a certain sentimental affection for later work like Words From the Exit Wound), this was an era when, if we’re honest, we admit probably most of us just stopped caring about Napalm Death. Luckily, a clean break from Earache a few years later a steel toed boot up the ass from a certain Swedish grind collective played Jesus to Napalm’s moribund Lazarus.

The verdict: There are plenty of bands that could have harnessed that internal tension to unleash an ass whupping album, but Napalm Death isn’t one of them. Instead, the band thrives when its internal harmony remains uncorrupted. If you need further proof, drop the needle on any post-Pintado album.

Fear of Napalm(isms): Oh Cliché Can You See

When last I poked (gentle) fun at Napalm Death, it was at the propensity of the band’s teenage incarnations to get all morbid and serious by ending their songs with the word die or death. A lot can be forgiven given the band’s youth. Would you want your youthful poetic indiscretions immortalized on silicon?
So this time, I’m gonna take a few whacks at the older, presumably wiser latter day Birmingham bangers.
It seems since the band kissed off Digby Pearson, some of their song writing has taken a turn for the clichéd, particularly in titling territory. The post-Earache albums have consistently featured cliché-titled songs. And as any Creating Writing 101 prof will tell you, clichés are signs of lazy writing that should be avoided like the plague.
Unlike early Napalm Death’s death obsession, which crossed lineups, this time around the culprit is largely one person: Barney Greenway.
Don’t get me wrong, mofo knows his way around a mic and I can’t imagine another frontman who commands a stage like Barney (Mark to his ‘rents). But he’s penned the majority of the band’s lazily-titled songs.
The unbroken streak began right out of the Earache gate on 2000’s Enemy of the Music Business with “Necessary Evil.” I don’t know if it’s necessary but the evil oozing from that song was repeating that phrase continuously.
And that’s the problem underlying the cliché thing. Not only do they trot out one worn out phrase after another, but they feel the need to pound that sentiment home by endlessly repeating said catch phrase through the song. When a line wears out its welcome in the course of a two minute song, we’ve got a problem. Where a lyricist of Jello Biafra-ian status could turn a cliché on its head with a dose of irony, Greenway just gives it to us verbatim.
And the punishment in capitals did not let up on 2002’s follow up Order of the Leach, which gave us the “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” and “Lowest Common Denominator” twofer.
Sadly the annoyance trailed after the Brummie bangers as they migrated to metal major Century Media, handing us the repetitive “Silence is Deafening” and “When All is Said and Done” (one Mr. Shane Embury can take a bow for the latter, though).
But it’s not like we it should be surprised. Napalm telegraphed this particular Napalmism on 1994’s somewhat underrated Fear, Emptiness, Despair, album that is “More Than Meets the Eye.”
So with the word out Napalm are readying their 13th studio album, I ask you, what should their next ditty be called?

A. “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned”
B. “A Bird in the Hand”
C. “An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away”
D. “All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy”

Feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments.

G&P review: Venomous Concept

Venomous Concept
Poisoned Apple
Century Media
According to Poisoned Apple’s seventh track, principle songwriter Shane Embury has “A Case of the Mondays.” Other than affirming his love for the collected works of Mike Judge, the Poison Idea inflected tune (Venomous Concept --> Poison Idea – Get it?) gets to the poisoned apple at the center of the band’s second long player, which never manages to move beyond workaday grumbling into out and out rage.
Embury has rotated to guitar while Danny Lilker has slotted into the bass position after Melvins mastermind Buzz Osbourne bid adieu (and wouldn’t ya know it, after Osbourne buzzed off, the band unleash their most Melvinsy cover art: an Apocalypse Now horroscape of aspoloded, bleeding bunnies that will have your kids checking their Easter baskets for IEDs). Danny Herrera (who unleashes some of his better blasts in recent memory) and Kevin Sharp round out the all star ensemble.
The membership musical chairs has meant a slight change in songwriting. Poisoned Apple sounds like post-Earache Napalm Death (especially the Century albums) gone hardcore. Sharp’s roar is as rasping and forceful as ever, boding well for the rumors Brutal Truth may return to the studio (with Lethargy/Kalibas/Sulaco’s Erik Burke standing in for the MIA Brent “Gurn” McCarty). Sharp and Embury give all the usual suspects a thorough lyrical beatdown: war sucks, conformity blows, jobs – who wants those? Yada Yada Yada. But VC are not meant to be boundary pushers but rather a loving tribute to the crusty hardcore that went before. So keeping in mind these trailblazers' best Lewis-and-Clarking years are behind them, there’s actually an enjoyable if derivative half an hour music to be had here.

The Dirty (Baker's) Dozen 2: Napalm Death

Napalm Death
Scum
Earache
1987
Notice one name that keeps popping up in this list? Napalm Death’s influence is unmistakable, and this quizzical album laid the groundwork for everything that came after. It’s a simple formula, but one that has been copied and built upon for 20 years now: Siege married to Discharge, cranked to 11.
While Napalm Death built and coeval bashers Doom, Unseen Terror and Heresy were strip mining a similar blitzkrieg hardcore approach, it was Scum were the sound, style and overall attack congealed and found a voice and a name.
These young Brummies were still punk as fuck – so punk they couldn’t even keep one line up together long enough to record a proper full length debut. Scum is a curious chimera of an album cobbled together from various incarnations and musical approaches that somehow creates a listenable whole.
Though the Bill Steer/Lee Dorian/Mick Harris lineup – augmented by ultimate grind scenester Shane Embury on follow up From Enslavement to Obliteration – has somehow developed a reputation as the band’s “true” incarnation, don’t overlook the contributions of founder Nik Bullen and a pre-Godflesh Justin Broaderick who penned some of the band’s most enduring anthems, including “Instinct of Survival,” “The Kill,” "Siege of Power" and ultimate punk piss take “You Suffer.”
That’s not to discredit the contributions of the B-side crew (rounded out by bassist Jim Whitely) which tightened the band’s sound, jettisoning the punk sloppiness for a slightly more streamlined metal attack, courtesy of Steer who was (re)animating Liverpuddlian zombies Carcass around the same period.
What really ties this album together and cements its place in the metal Acropolis is Harris’ drumming, a blurring blast of BPMs unheard of to that point. So fast, the band was known to fall out in giggles during rehearsals at the absurdity of it all.
Though Scum represented a subtle advancement over ’80s Britcore, Napalm Death’s true genius was in marketing – not a term typically found in metal’s anti-establishment playbook.. The terms grindcore and blastbeat were both succored at the infamous Mermaid club where a nascent Napalm Death kicked out the jams of what would be their trademark sound and spark a musical revolution that resonates today wherever young disaffected punks look to vent high speed frustration.
The grindcore machine first cobbled together in a Birmingham basement more than two decades ago, still rolls on to this day.

The Dirty (Baker's) Dozen 3: Carcass

Carcass
Reek of Putrefaction
Earache
1988
Like Lovecraft’s Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat with a Thousand Young, Carcass sired a plague of bastard young who endlessly ape every phase of the band’s existence, from the gore soaked roots straight through their melodic death second act and even their death ‘n’ roll denouement.
Goregrind as you know it today got its start here. Carcass took Repulsion’s horror film fixation and slowly dissected it on the operating table, and grinders have been scouring medical dictionaries and the Physicians Desk Reference in the two decades since trying to keep up with the masters.
From their first album, Carcass set the standard for guttural grunts, blown out, bass heavy production and medical atrocity lyrics. Until Reek, grind had never sounded so huge and menacing. Where Repulsion were really just a very fast thrash band and Brummy punks Napalm Death simply accelerated Siege’s hardcore template, Carcass heaved up gargantuan sounding riffs and beats all over metal’s shoes.
From meat collage masterpieces to pen and ink work for other bands, Jeff Walker was also instrumental in crafting grindcore and death metal’s look as well, designing the iconic Earache logo and providing the artwork for Napalm Death’s Scum.
Since the Carcass’ demise, Bill Steer has laid aside his bone saw for a stack of 70s riff rockers and Liverpudlian loudmouth Walker has become the reigning smartass of metal. Like one time label mates At the Gates, Carcass has risen from the undead, sans Ken Owen who is physically unable to handle the rigors or playing a live set following a horrific accident, to hit the stage once again this summer. Here’s hoping metal’s premiere grave robbers do more than rummage through their own mausoleum in the name of a quick buck.