Napalm Death – From Enslavement To Obliteration

This album steamrolls through its twenty-plus tracks with relentless power and angst. Where the debut, Scum, summons feelings of despair, From Enslavement leans more toward anger. It has more of a "screw-you" feeling than Scum's "we're all screwed" tone. The songs average about a minute apiece, and are so fast there's no opportunity to catch a breath. Several have become live staples, like Lucid Fairytale, Unchallenged Hate, the title track, and the five-second Dead. Out of the others, I'd like to see Cock-Rock Alienation and Display to Me played live, as they'd both fit in well with the band's current sound. Some of the riffs on this album are catchier than Scum, but the extremity is retained, you might say. Be warned, though; like Scum, pure grindcore like this is not for the uninitiated, and if you're only a fan of more recent Napalm albums, you might not even like this. Even though you can hear traces of their later sound in the guitar tone and hardcore-inspired breakdowns, it's a different style of music. But if you listen to it a few times and try to understand it, it will eventually blow you away. Blindingly fast, grinding riffs, whirlwind hyper-speed drums, infrequently enunciated barking death vocals mixed with utterly insane, nearly unintelligible screaming...crazy stuff. From Enslavement is beyond heavy, and is the very definition of extreme.