Picture me, my long brown hair sailing back and forth as I bang my head
mercilessly to the beat of Napalm Death’s rockin’ new album. OK, I’m not
really doing that right now...but I could be! After listening to Enemy of
the Music Business, I quite literally cursed myself for never having
really listened to this band before. Enemy... contains everything I like about metal: strength, speed, aggression, thunderous bass, growled vocals and
machine-gun-precise drumming. It's like thrash, but heavier and meaner -- not quite as headbanging as vintage Metallica thrash, per se, but that doesn’t
make Napalm’s new slab of grindcore any less infectious or captivating.
For those who don’t know, Napalm Death virtually invented grindcore
when they fused punk with speed metal back in 1984. If you’re familiar with
speed metal at all, imagine D.R.I., only ten times faster and a hundred times
more brutal, and with equally biting yet slightly more sophisticated
lyrics. No, they’re not singing about Satan and church burning; they’re
talking about blind consumerism and moral fascism. In "C.S. (Conservative
Shithead) Part II", the lyric goes "The Anti-Christ shifts to the right/ he
wears his 'X' and reviles mine." Are they talking about straightedgers?
They very well could be!
From the opening second of "Taste the Poison", when Mark Greenway shouts
"ABSTINENCE", you just know in your bones that this album is gonna be a
ripper. As the album title intimates, these guys have been jerked around a
lot since 1984. They’re pissed, they're feeling a little hostile and they’re gonna
unleash hell for the next 48 minutes. By the time I get to "Thanks for
Nothing" I feel as though I've just clawed my way out of a wind
tunnel -- but I’m just dying to get back in. If this is hell, it’s glorious.
Enemy of the Music Business is apparently a homecoming for Napalm
Death. Fans everywhere are comparing it to their debut album. They even busted out the original band logo for the cover. Shit, "C.S. Part II" is a
sequel to a song they recorded almost 13 years ago. What I want to know is,
where the hell have I been hiding since 1984?
