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Rating: 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!
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Taste the Poison (01:49)
Abstinence works for me, not for them
Intolerance, far worse things? This makes no sense
Get high on me and mine
Take the poison
Raise a voice? The art of making noise
Attacking stance? Fist in face for personal
choice
So witless? self, self, self.
Take the poison
Two polluting lifestyle doctrines in defense
Re-assess the threats to well-being
Re-direct
And clear your heads
Dialogue (is a) powerful drug?
(not) verbal poison
Abstinence works for me, not for them.
Intolerance, far worse things? this makes no sense
Take the poison
02 Next on the List (03:36)
Next on the list?
Such a smug parasite
Snug in the comfort zone
We stepped back and watched while you violated
our effects, our spirits, our souls
Opportunist scum, think you're so immune?
Opportunist scum, we yearn to see you removed.
Opportunist scum, truly spineless cunt.
Opportunist scum, basks in his loathsome glow.
Where once I was passive, I'm ready to snap.
A pound of flesh for those that you've taken
That smiling surround can't shield you forever
When it slips, we'll be there to fuck your world!
A slap in the face
A slap in the face
Don't turn your back, don't lower your guard
Or assume you're safe around fellow sharks
'cause when I catch that patronizing smirk
(It) strengthens my will to smash your worthless bulk
A slap in the face
A slap in the face
A slap in the face
Goodbye to logic for this necessary justice [x 2]
04 Vermin (02:17)
The rats on/ this earth/ have nothing on you
An insult/ to those which/ crawl the sewers
Devourer, plunderer, deceptor
Sniff out a/ scheme/ and leave the scraps behind
Voracious, insatiable? A nose attuned to greed
Devourer, plunderer, deceptor
Evade all traps
and come out gnashing, snarling, gnashing, snarling!
Disguises are many
Media pawn or man on the street
They'll scavenge your emotions
and leave you diseased
They'd steal a last possession
And smile as you concede
Devourer, plunderer, deceptor
05 Volume of Neglect (03:20)
Mitch Harris, Jesse Pintado
Speculate freely
Begrudge me intensely
Lacking a conscience
Lacking intelligence
Lesser than nothing
Lower than everything
As you drain our vitality
to a mundane reality
A form of therapy
without compensation
A vague psychology
Free from obligation.
Intercept the negligence
Accept the consequence
Amongst Barbaria
Mass hysteria
Opposite in a sign to abide
when the future is ours to decide
We continue to watch and observe
Just to find out what purpose it serves
Paralysed ? A spectacle / for all to see
Hapiness within our grasp, but out of reach
Volume of neglect
forcibly expressed
Volume of neglect
forcibly expressed
Devastate a silhouette ? Calm and serene
Abandon / a systematic insane routine
Volume of neglect
forcibly expressed
Volume of neglect
forcibly expressed
Opposite in a sign to abide
when the future is ours to decide
We continue to watch and observe
Just to find out what purpose it serves
08 Blunt Against the Cutting Edge (03:03)
Blunt/ on the cuttong/ edge!
This is stylistic disaster
Or so I'm told
Won't meet your estimations
Do well to fold
Can't keep up
to the dummy run
Am I redundant?
Nice and neat
(with a) sideline in grief
I'll stay unkempt
A real cutting edge is th scourge of the norm
For all the angst, you're tantrum-fuelled dolls
Abrasiveness a convenience
Sell for a score
Come up clean doing the dirty
Cut and run, then dissolve
Mould in motion
See straight through
Transparent you
A real cuting edge is the scourge of the norm
For all the angst, you're tantrum-fuelled dolls
I'm blunted, I'm blunted on the cutting edge
Sharpness diminished through truth to myself
I'm rusted, I'm rusted on the cutting edge
Sight-lines cloud over when met with pretence
Together.
Drop the act!
Drop the act!
I'm blunted, I'm blunted on the cutting edge
Sharpness diminished through truth to myself
I'm rusted, I'm rusted on the cuting edge
Sight-lines cloud over when met with pretence
Drop the act!
Drop the act!
12 Mechanics of Deceit (03:21)
Cloaks of sickness/ keeping us sweet
Delusional blackness/ fictional madness
Visionary blackness/ traps are set
Revolving mind-doors/ conspiring our downfall
Which came first? The lies or deceit?
Why did the suffering cross the divide?
The dealer sold his soul/ to hide
And left us on the other side
The business lessons for which we burn
Desolate loops in which we turn
Saga of fools, a voyage of trust
No contracts bound
Gathering dust
Which came first? The secret or the crime?
Where does the loyalty cross the line?
The dealer sold his soul to hide
And left us on the other side
Tranquilize our denial
Vengeance is mine
Capitalize/ on regret
Kick aside what aspires
Vengeance is ours
Our defence won't expire
Eat the shit with a smile/ don't be frail
Our word is bound
Face the wall; fill the mould that we take
And break with our hands
Sign the line; it's your life
Don't be squeamish
Take the time, taste the sweat
Choke back your tongue
Mechanics, mechanics, mechanics of deceit
Glorified, butchered, bathed in malice
Sign the line; it's your life
Don't be squeamish
Take the time, taste the sweat
Choke back your tongue
at the shit with a smile, don't be frail
Our word is bound
Face the wall; fill the mould that we take
And break with our hands
Mechanics of deceit [x3]
Tranquilize our denial
Vengeance is mine
capitalize on regret
Kick aside what aspires
Vengeance is ours
Our defence won't expire--so beware!
13 (The Public Get) What the Public Doesn't Want (03:14)
Jesse Pintado
Name your price for progress
Impoverished settle the bill
Clear a path - coming through !
Clear a path - coming through !
Stylise
Make it easy / on the eye
Keep our distance -
too under-formed to grace the 'sublime'
Flatter to deceive
Building arthouse cosmetics
Like a mismatched prosthetic
Like a mismatched prosthetic
Spreads llike wildfire
Burgeoning yuppie nirvana
Highbrow aesthetics
Decadents always crave more
Marvel at / the sleek design
The wilting talk / of curves and lines
A piece-de / -resistance
To Banish my pig-ignorance
The public gets / what the public doesn't want
What use is this / to man or beast
It glosses over / basic needs
The public gets / what the public doesn't want
Access denied ? we're utter philistines
Access denied ? we're utter philistines
Caged in / the exclusion zone
Pass away / in sepia tones
Access denied ? accept we're cultural slime
Access denied ? accept we're cultural slime
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