Thursday, June 19, 2008

604. Napalm Death - Scum (1987)
















Track Listing

1. Multinational Corporations
2. Instinct Of Survival
3. Kill
4. Scum
5. Caught... In A Dream
6. Polluted Minds
7. Sacrificed
8. Siege Of Power
9. Control
10. Born On Your Knees
11. Human Garbage
12. You Suffer
13. Life
14. Prison Without Walls
15. Point Of No Return
16. Negative Approach
17. Success
18. Deceiver
19. CS
20. Parasites
21. Pseudo Youth
22. Divine Death
23. As The Machine Rolls On
24. Common Enemy
25. Moral Crusade
26. Stigmatized
27. MAD
28. Dragnet

Review

If you think Slayer was heavy and fast you ain't seen nothing yet. Napalm Death sounds like their name, a relentless attack that will leave your ears scorched. It fast, furious and not very pleasant to listen to at all.

I have to admire their politics (they don't seem to like multinational corporations, the only two words I understand in the whole album), and the sheer speed and anger projected here, I also admire a certain experimentalism that must be present to produce such a grating album, with one of the songs not even reaching 2 seconds and most being under 2 minutes.

That said, if I never hear this album again I will only be too happy, this is fucking horrible to listen to, I don't understand how some people listen to this for pleasure, for anything other than as a mildly interesting noise experiment. Sure, teenagers are sometimes angry and this has some kind of cathartic effect, but this is about the only good thing I can say about this.

Track Highlights


1. You Suffer

Final Grade

5/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The Side A of the Scum album was originally recorded for £50.00 at Rich Bitch studio (Birmingham, England) in August 1986: it was intended to form part of a split release with the English hardcore thrash group Atavistic on Manic Ears records (Bristol, England). After an extensive line-up change, the second half of Scum was recorded in May 1987 at Rich Bitch studio. The album was released as a single album through Earache Records in July 1987.

You Suffer, live:



Yes, that was it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I didn't even get one word out of this album. Actually, I did like it but I couldn't at all come around to the vocals. It sounds like Dethklok only without the humor.

Rod McBan said...

But hideous cataclysms of noise are fun!

I prefer what grind has progressed into, rally. Melt-Banana are pretty great - heavy grind and no-wave mixed with early Boredoms, rap, ambient and glitch, complemented by Tom Morello-y guitars (without the suck).

Anonymous said...

well, you have to realize the whole context of this album to fully appreciate how genius it was (although it of course just was the tip of the iceberg and the biggest representive of a musical development): this was THE record to fully deliver all the promises punk (and hardcore as its successor) made. it is fast, mean, harsh and even to this day not compatible to the general public (contrary to classic punk bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash or even the Dead Kennedys that are accessible enough to put them in commercials).

"grunge" might have been the last straw to finally break the alternative aesthetic of the 70s and 80s into the mainstream, but grind was the last hurrah of punk as an counterculture idea.