Band: Napalm Death
Release: Utilitarian
Napalm Death started no less than thirty years ago and hail from Birmingham. Let’s be honest, it’s not exactly the capital of ‘grindcore’. The band have been official album chart entrants, Guinness World Record holders and have also appeared in hit TV series Skins.
Utilitarian is no less than their fourteenth studio album and is one of the bands most ambitious to date. Not just sounding like a flurry of power violence and high tempo driven madness Utilitarian presents the listener with subtle differences to most other current grindcore bands. For example ‘Everyday Pox’ has unique sax passages played by John Zorn or choral clean sections in tracks ‘Fall On Their Swords’ and ‘Blank Look About Face’. Also whereas the album is seemingly quick and extremely frantic greenway notes “the ever-present darker, more ambient side of Napalm has now gotten faster too – or at least the tempo of it varies so it’s not just exclusively slow and mournful. This gives it an extra, obtuse dimension. And hopefully people get lost in the frantic thickness of it.”
Lyrically the album is focused on cultural, social and political problems with a whole scope of ideas. Tracks range from being about the arms trade, gender expression, everyday life for the common man and the environment.
Utilitarian is old school grindcore with a new edge, new ambitions and new ideas. It is one of the front running albums that the band have ever made and lif long fans have something to be proud of. There’s still hope and fight out there for British grindcore.
Reviewer: Leigh Brooks
