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February 15 - 22, 1 9 9 6
Grinding away
Napalm Death deliver heavy-metal Diatribes
by Carly Carioli
When Napalm Death made their debut, in 1986, atleast one critic called it "the end of music." A decade later,with the
release of their seventh album (not counting numerous EPs), they're stillnegotiating the boundaries of extreme heavy
metal. And if Diatribes (Earache) is their most accessible effort to date,it also shows that the world has come to meet
Napalm Death at least halfway.
In England, where the distinctions between hardcorepunk and speed metal were not as rigid as stateside, the band's 1987 Scumsloughed off the restraints of both like layers of dead skin, slashing through28 noise-addled bursts in 33 minutes. Hence, grindcore. The discernible"songs" lacked form, their mini-movements crashing into one another(scream into headlong churn), breaking meter at will, piling inhuman speedon buckling atonal riffs. Buried within was "You Suffer," a singleseismorgasmic bleat of bass-drum-feedback-shout clocking in at exactly onesecond. It was the end of something -- perhaps only of hardcore' faster-is-better.
Scum and its follow-up, From Enslavement to Obliteration,positioned Napalm Death almost as far from mainstream heavy metal (Metallica,Slayer) as the metallers were from Sonic Youth. For heavy metal, which thrivesin the murky corners of dark one-way alleys and feeds on symbolic extremes,the lure of the void Napalm Death opened was irresistible. When the mainstreammetal audience flocked to the alternativ party in 1991, there was stilla small but dedicated audience for grindcore -- and that audience, alongwith Napalm Death and others, has defined the boundaries of metal ever since.
Meanwhile, the unmitigated violence the group committedagainst the mere concepts of melody and song inspired avant-jazz guru JohnZorn. Championing their chaos, Zorn added reed-blowing, spy themes, andother ephemera; and he broke "free hardcore" on the world withNaked City. Later he picked up Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris and formedthe improv-grindcore unit Painkiller.
Flash-forward to last year: Napalm Death have wornthrough nearly a dozen members. Since Scum, they've reinvented themselveswith an elemental ferocity on 1990's Harmony Corruption and 1994's Fear,Emptiness, Despair. Yet Diatribes finds them taking less for granted thanat any time this decade. The opening track, "Greed Killing," isinstantly the most accessible thing they've ever done; the next track containsthe first shards of traditional melody they've ever used; and further onthey briefly abandon the one-dimensional gravel-throated yowl that's beena constant (and their biggest commercial liability) from day one.
It's a gutsy, invigorating effort at a time whengrindcore has become utterly predictable. The trademark cutthroat vocallashings that were Napalm Death's trademark have become the genre's definingcliché (from Cookie Monster to cookie cutter). So, for that matter,have the detuned thrashing, the hyperventilating percussion, the Flightof the Bumble Bee riffs wound into endless contortions, and the polysyllabicrantings.
For a unit that made a name for itself with matchlessbrawn, the best efforts on Diatribes highlight Napalm's restraint. "CursedTo Crawl" lies back and stokes a simmering groove before settling ona scurrilous, post-apocalyptic riff. "Cold Forgiveness," the album'sslowest number, breathes with a shifty, haunting intensity that carriesover into the thrashier material on the album's second half. ThroughoutDiatribes, feedback squalls, metallic whines/drones, subharmonic scuffles,and jarring bursts of distortion knit themselves into a paranoid backgroundcollage. Adding a cabal of call-and-response patterns ping-ponging betweenthe guitars, "Take the Straw" and "Just Rewards" suggesta tribal, less robotic industrial music with the axes standing in for powertools. Even a seemingly tired old trick like slamming an almost mechanizedmilitaristic stomp into chaotic amphetamine stride still manages to be vaguelythreatening. Sample lyric from the title track: "Lie down/And cry allyou can/The machine rolls over you." Yeah, that sounds about right.
So Napalm remain comfortably beyond the reach ofMTV, but pop music keeps getting heavier. Two albums last year illustratedtheir predicament. Using the one-second statement of "You Suffer"as a model, Anal Cunt's Top 40 Hits turned blip-length noise bursts intoa hilariously monotonous joke, in effect declaring the end of grindcore.On the other hand, former death-metal guitarist Billy Corgan included aslightly updated grindcore number on Smashing Pumpkins' double album, completewith a midsong degeneration into noise, called "Tales of a ScorchedEarth," in effect declaring grindcore's entrance into mainstream popmusic. Which leaves Napalm Death squarely in the middle out of their element,almost by definition, but for the time being, at least, pushing forward.
Napalm Death play an all-ages show at the Rat Tuesday,February 20.
Copyright © 1995 The Phoenix Media/CommunicationsGroup. All rights reserved.
