Resentment Is Always Seismic (Dark Sky Burial Dirge) (6:01)
Review: RECOMMENDED
17 albums in and it feels like Napalm Death are only just hitting their stride. Well, they've been hitting their stride for roughly 17 albums, but while many bands - especially those at the more frenetic and uncompromising end of things - tend to start, err, compromising after four or five long forms, the Birmingham grindcore masters still sound fresh. Albeit fresh but covered in sweat and rage.
Following on from 2020's Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, Resentment is a mini-LP that picks up where its predecessor left off. Among the highlights is a fantastic cover of 1980s industrial electronic outfit Slab!, but really it's nigh-on-impossible to pick specifics here - buckle up, turn it up, and let the ferocity wash over you. Suffice to say, keeping this level of intensity without winding up sounding like you're screaming into the abyss isn't easy, and Napalm Death's career should be considered a masterclass.
Review: 2024 saw the return of easily the biggest powerviolence act to ever decimate speakers and human hearing - Nails, who picked up right where they left off with their ferocious fourth full-length Every Bridge Burning, marking their first new album in almost a decade. Despite rave reviews, many of the fanbase argue that its 2016 predecessor You Will Never Be One Of Us is still the band's finest achievement of musical malevolence to date. Their final effort with the original trio line-up of bassist John Gianelli and drummer Taylor Young before both would amicably depart in 2020, these 21 minutes of sonic abrasion (still their longest LP) deliver on everything the Nails ethos stands for - frenetic riffage, crushing breakdowns, hulking grooves and a breakneck pace libel to instil panic attacks, while primary songwriter Todd Jones' nihilistic viewpoint and seemingly anti-everything attitude is barely decipherable through his mouth-full-of-broken-glass vocals. Be warned, however, each and every micro-burst of fury such as the 45-second 'Friend To All' is paid back by the end with the heinously oppressive noise-sludge-doom monolithic closer that is the 8-minute 'They Come Crawling Back'.
Review: After the visceral energy of their debut, 'Throb Throb', and the subtle refinement displayed on 'Jettison', the Chicago hardcore label rejecters did little to aid their claim with the brawny, scrappy 'Understand?'
Packed with an onslaught of riffs, pummelling d-beat blasts and gang vocals galore, while rife with unkempt cynicism and aggression on the anthemic anti-social title-track or the snapshot of 'The Sniper Song,' Naked Raygun would only further cement their status as punk all timers on this seminal fourth record.
Review: Following on from their critically acclaimed 1988 sophomore effort From Enslavement To Obliteration, which marked their final full-length with original vocalist Lee Dorrian and guitarist Bill Steer, Birmingham grindcore legends Napalm Death would redefine and re-establish themselves on 1990's Harmony Corruption. With the addition of current frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway, the group would trek to the iconic Morrisound Recording in Tampa, Florida (studio home to many a classic death metal record from the likes of Cannibal Corpse and Death), to craft a work far more sonically inspired by their outlying peers within the genre. Working from their refined grindcore blueprint, yet imbuing the trudging chaos with especially heavy riffage and even low guttural growls, this newly tempered form of deathgrind would not only re-chart the band's course for the ensuing decades, but cause a connective riff between the two subcultures of metallic extremity still felt to this day. Vocalists from the two legendary Floridian death metal acts Deicide (Glen Benton) and Obituary (John Tardy) also both make appearances on the vile 'Unfit Earth', making for one of the only posse-like grindcore cuts you're likely to ever have invade your ear canals.
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