Napalm Death
Enemy Of The Music Business

THE REVIEW

The '90s were a fluctuating period for Napalm Death. After founding grindcore in the '80s thanks to two milestones of the genre such as "Scum" and "From Enslavement To Obliteration", the British five-piece transitioned to death metal with 1990's "Harmony Corruption", without forgetting their roots.

And so, after other excellent albums like "Fear, Emptiness, Despair" and "Utopia Banished", Barney Greenway and company decided to focus on slower rhythms and almost industrial riffs with 1996's "Diatribes", an album that decidedly softened their sound, and with the following year's "Inside The Torn Apart". However, the experiment only half-succeeded, as truly excellent tracks were alternated with quite forgettable ones. Thus, after closing their fifteen-year contract with Earache, Napalm Death released "Enemy Of The Music Business" in 2000, through Spitfire Records, a year after the excellent EP "Leaders Not Followers".

This CD represented a major rebirth for the group, as it encompasses all the formulas the band used throughout its career. Indeed, it harbors many influences: besides the death metal and grindcore roots, elements from punk-core are present, and in addition, the industrial attitude from the 96-98 period is revisited. To give an idea, "Enemy Of The Music Business" is an album brutal and impetuous like the group's early days, yet with greatly improved instrumentation and technical preparation. Thus, we are faced with real breaths of fire like the opening "Taste The Poison", a true manifesto of the new path undertaken by the five, or "Vermin", an extremely fast track worthy of the most furious and uncompromising hardcore metal. The group's death metal roots are more emphasized in tracks like "Mechanics of Deceit" and "Necessary Evil", with an almost melodic chorus and an overtly hardcore refrain. The punk-core vein is evident in tracks like "Can't Pay Won't Play" and "Blunt Against The Cutting Edge", where they demonstrate they have not forgotten the lessons of sacred monsters like Discharge.

The 14 tracks of the album are generally quite short, about two to a maximum of three minutes long, but despite this, they manage to be always engaging and never dull, given the numerous tempo changes within a single song and the compositional variety of the work in general; aided by a thoroughly restless and earthquake-like atmosphere, expressed in both the music and the lyrics, always politically engaged.

"Enemy Of The Music Business" is therefore a turbulent, aggressive, engaging, and exhilarating work, rich in adrenaline as per the English combo's best tradition, a concentrate of renewed and uncompromising extreme metal. The first of a series of beautiful albums ("Order Of The Leech", "The Code Is Red...", and the latest "Smear Campaign") that prove Napalm Death are anything but dead; in fact, they have renewed themselves and come back even more aggressive than before, a true legend of extreme music to which the new generations must look up.

An absolute must-have!