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.

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.