Wednesday 5 April 2017

Napalm Death ‎– "Scum" (Earache ‎– MOSH 3) 1987


Comparing this monolithic jaw-dropping moment in music history to the Sewer Zombies album, (belated released by Ron Johnson to try and jump on the Grindcore bandwagon), Is like comparing being rammed by an icebreaker to being hit in the face by a soggy marshmallow.
Hearing this album for the first time was one of those rare, and getting rarer, "What the Fuck was that!?" moments.
Where did this come from? A mutated form of hardcore, doom metal (before doom ever existed),mixed up at different extreme tempo's, breakneck speed, to a soul crushing crawl. This was the first time I heard that growling vocal style, that is sooooo boring thirty years afterwards.Its an incredibly bizarre record, that borders on the Avant Garde, more than punk'n'metal; which was picked upon by Avant-jazzer ,John Zorn for his 'Naked City' project.....and later for the fantastic 'Painkiller' which included Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris.
This stuff was the only alternative to that bloody Acid House/rave nonsense that dominated for the next few decades.
Napalm Death were never the same after this, as line up changes, and repeating themselves endlessly dulled the effect.There should only have been one album, which would explain why several members left after its release.
However, the Peel sessions are in fact far superior to the official recordings...(coming up next of course).

Tracklist:

A1 Multinational Corporations
A2 Instinct Of Survival
A3 The Kill
A4 Scum
A5 Caught....In A Dream
A6 Polluted Minds
A7 Sacrificed
A8 Siege Of Power
A9 Control
A10 Born On Your Knees
A11 Human Garbage
A12 You Suffer
B1 Life?
B2 Prison Without Walls
B3 Point Of No Return
B4 Negative Approach
B5 Success?
B6 Deceiver
B7 C.S.
B8 Parasites
B9 Pseudo Youth
B10 Divine Death
B11 As The Machine Rolls On
B12 Common Enemy
B13 Moral Crusade
B14 Stigmatized
B15 M.A.D.
B16 Dragnet


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thirty Years to the day and I have never understood what all the hubbub's about. This album is aggressively average at best. The vocals are terrible. The instrumentals are forgettable save for the 1sec. gimmick track. The notoriety of this supposedly superfast, superheavy not-quite-metal-but-not-quite-punk icon vastly overshadows the unimpressive reality. How grindcore ever caught on and evolved the way it did is something of a miracle, if this of all things was indeed as influential as many purport it to be.