Fourteen albums in (not counting the cover-platter “Leaders Part 2”) three decades and NAPALM DEATH remain the leaders of the grindcore / death metal world, once again showing the upstarts how it’s done. Not content to simply wear the term “legendary,” the band has once again raised the bar on what it takes to remain at the top of the heap with its highly anticipated new album “Utilitarian”. While their past roster reads like a who’s who of extreme metal royalty, including Lee Dorrian (Cathedral), Bill Steer (Carcass), Justin Broadrick (Godflesh) and the late Jesse Pintado (Terrorizer) to name a few, it’s the current line-up of Mark “Barney” Greenway (vocals), Mitch Harris (guitars), Shane Embury (bass), and Danny Herrera (drums) that has kept the legend alive and seething. “Utilitarian” is the follow-up to the band’s much lauded 2009 album, “Time Waits For No Slave”, and sees the quartet return in expected raw and uncompromising fashion.
In the wake of a gruelling international tour schedule for “Time Waits For No Slave”, NAPALM DEATH finally got down to writing for “Utilitarian” in early 2011. It was recorded over the course of the year at Parlour Studios in Northamptonshire, UK with producer Russ Russell monitoring the mayhem, finally mixed and mastered in November. The end result is vicious and chaotic, but Greenway notes that “the ever-present darker, more ambient side of Napalm (references: Swans, My Bloody Valentine, Birthday Party et al) 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.”
“Utilitarian” runs the gamut from straight-ahead violence and force to pure, undiluted NAPALM DEATH-induced chaos that overall provides a well-rounded bloodletting that’s not for the weak and also confronts the listener with such surprising moments as the sax passages by none other than John Zorn on ‘Everyday Pox’ or choral-like clean sections in ‘Fall On Their Swords’ or ‘Blank Look About Face’. The latter is a perfect bridge to the album’s outspoken lyrical content as it viciously attacks politicians’ opportunistic talk that according to Greenway only knows one goal: “Say anything to tame a crowd – whether it is sycophantic praise, bullshit morality or rabble-rousing power-speak – as long as they can cling on to their place in the hierarchy.”
True to the band’s tradition of spitting gallons of verbal venom, “Utilitarian” is an in-your-face razor-edged platter of social, cultural and political commentary. Far from being a placard-waving “cause” band, the quartet offer up personal views on the degeneration of society (‘Everyday Pox’), the arms trade (‘Fall On Their Swords’), sexual and gender expression (‘Gag Reflex’), the environment (‘Order Of Magnitude’) and aspects of everyday life for the common man (‘Collision Course’, ‘Think Tank Trials’) revealing Barney’s understanding of what to do with your life: “We have a finite period of existence that is all too easy to waste, and ultimately we all deserve happiness and contentment.” The bottom line is: Think for yourself, liberate yourself and don’t end up feeding the machine that all too willingly eats you up.
Ultimately, NAPALM DEATH are special because they never sacrificed their ideals for anything mundane, will continue pleasing their fans with a stunning record named “Utilitarian” and ceaseless touring activities in support of its release while provoking world leaders with all the rage and criticism you can squeeze into a song. Extreme music’s raised fist is back!
The Melvins have been a band for over 25 years…
The Melvins have done a shit load of albums…. How many is a shit load? No one really knows.
The Melvins live in Los Angeles and it’s understood in hip circles that the United States tilts left and anything covered in slime tends to slide straight out to California. If your sliding too fast when you slide into San Francisco you tend to glance off south and the real scum bags end up in Los Angeles where their skin dries into a Malibu Ken tan which most hipsters have to painstakingly remove with Easy Off oven cleaner.
We all love porn right? And with the intern
et we’ve all become totally bored with porn. Bored out of our minds with easy access day and night internet porn.
The Melvins have four members.
King Buzzo… Longest surviving and only original member left. When they get around to replacing him there will be no original members!
Dale Crover… Long standing drummer and part time guitar player. Dale likes his booze in a High Ball glass.
Jared Warren… Bass player, singer and part time drama geek. Jared also plays in the band Big Business.
Coady Willis… Drummer. Coady has a funny story about trying to play a gig in leather pants. Ask him, it’s funny as shit! Coady also plays drums in Big Business.
So there you have it!
You can find other interesting bits and bobs about the Melvins on line and some of it is even true! Well, it’s at least as true as what the band would tell you in person.
Yako says, “Using PC for shows, we can have much more possibilities, like we can use more samples and more various sounds of drums and synth. We are still on the way and there are still many things that we need to do and we want to do. So far we are having fun challenging.
Trying new things is always good. ^o^”
“We had been playing with human drummer and human bassist since we started band, and we ourselves need to feel band sounds on the stage. So we are trying to make the sound
real. It is difficult and can not be the same as real drum sounds, of course. But we would like to keep live aspect and we would like
people to enjoy our show as live performance, and hope people understand what we do and what we try and they enjoy our music.”