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.

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.

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.

Fear of Napalm(isms): Death Doesn't Become You

Oh Napalm Death, how do I love thee? Let me count the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on your albums, shows and shirts over the last 16 years.
I’m not really a favorites kind of guy, but if I was pressed, I would say Scum, Harmony Corruption and even Smear Campaign rate as serious contenders for the desert island album list.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally roll my eyes when I crack their lyric sheets. Cuz if we’re all honest here, their rhetorical exploits have occasionally wandered into the realms of bad Live Journal poetry.
And since I’m coming to the foreseeable end of the Carcass Word of the Day shtick, I thought I’d turn my sights on another of grind’s pantheon because, as Abbie Hoffman sagely observed, “Sacred cow makes the best hamburger.”
It’s with that satirical mission, I hereby unveil the latest recurring feature where I’ll poke some gentle fun at what we can call Napalmisms, those lyrical tics that began with Scum and virally trailed through the band’s career before infecting their legion of imitators as well.

For our first lesson let’s all open the Gospel According to Beavis, turn with me to the chapter of Cornholio. Picture the seen with me if you will: a pretentious early ’90s coffee house as a Hank Rollins look alike belts out horrifically bad poetry, capped by the immortal line, “And then, my friend, YOU DIE!”
Kinda makes you wonder if some of Napalm Death’s earliest members ditched the whole grind hustle for cartoon scripting because the teen metalheads had similarly morbid sentiments and felt the need to emphasize that by slotting die/death at the end of their songs. On unfuckwithable classic Scum, they hit the trifecta, committing that sin in triplicate with two different line ups.
Exhibit A, one of my personal faves, “Instinct of Survival,” when ends on the rainbow and unicorn sentiment “Another product for you to buy/ You’ll keep paying until you die.”
Oh but death is a dish served reheated, so Napalm pulls the same sentiment outta the fridge and nukes it lukewarm just five tracks later on “Sacrifice.” Witness the lyrical go to move “The thoughts I had/ Are now denied/ And one day soon/ I hope you die.”
But lest you think the Steer/Dorian/Harris/Whiteley would eschew the same rhetorical flourish, “Divine Death” ends with, well, “divine death.”
And the boys were right back at it on the very next album, From Enslavement to Obliteration, with the single-word diatribe “Dead.” Luckily this particular Napalmism quickly petered out after that never to bge seen again to date.
So what should aspiring grind lyricists take away from this exercise? Ending songs on death/die/dead does not make you profound or ultra-morbid or edgy. It just makes me laugh at you, and then, my friend, YOU DIE!

Spot a likely Napalmism? Drop me a comment or shoot me an emai.