Napalm Death
The Code Is Red... Long Live The Code

THE REVIEW

Regenerating, liberating, (sub)human, musical purification: this could be a way to attempt to summarily depict the current solid and unwavering Napalm Death, ruthless, wall of sound.
The now somewhat aged Grindcorers par excellence, Napalm Death, 2005 variant (now a quartet, after the recent departure of Floridian Jesse Pintado), effectively deface the staff, with the same unchanging enthusiasm, the same authentic, devastating, feral freshness of their beginnings: an exhausting, dense work, with a "specific weight" at times, if unaccustomed, enervating. Intensity seems to be the underlying watchword of the sixteen ferocious, corrosive acoustic shards contained in the urgent "Code Red": a vigor, mind you, not burdened by the exclusive hyper-kinetic cardiopulmonary/earbanging (distant are the days of "From Enslavement..."), well known to long-time Napalm-aficionados (...and dislikers).

Blithely disregarding the multiple scathing critiques reserved for Them since their early, ultra-guttural and caustic vinyl cries (the A-side of "Scum" dates back to the archaic 1986), the theorists of "obliteration from enslavement", having bypassed some previous vinyl (and digital) legacies from the mid-nineties, not exactly marked by the same expressive urgency of their derided beginnings, for about three works now, have managed to materialize an unexpected yet remarkable process of revitalization/polishing of the known formula, unleashing today an ultra-hardcore platter (if not in the strict expressive formula, in its magmatic substance), square, impetuous and merciless, albeit ferociously flowing. "Silence is Deafening" a true intentional paradigm (more than concretely confirmed, to clear any doubts..), as well as an opening track, suggests not even figuratively what will be developed (also at a textual level) within the last legacy of the Birmingham/Floridans; mountain-splitting riffs, brutal/corrupted vocals, sometimes paroxysmal speeds although "humanly bearable," up to the central "chorus": an exhausting napalm-mosh/part of clear underlying proto-affiliation Sabbath/Celtic Frost-ian, monstrously "heavy" and shivering (nothing new under the sun ?: one should allow a "listen," just to feel the effect-it-makes...): for years, within the Napalm Death-machine (such is the efficiency that it would seem the whole is not performed by normal humanoids), such fierce, salvific, released energy has not been heard.

Mitch Harris (contrary to what might be suspected), does not seem at all affected by the current single-handedness of the hefty/incisive riffing: paradoxically the thick, fierce, guitar layer seems to have gained in stridency and freshness.
Among such a collection of sweet sounds, we note the pleasant opportunity to be able to listen to the personal tribute/legacy of the "historic" screening/ante, Dead Kennedyan disorienting throat, Jello Biafra (emblem of North American independent music... and beyond), who returns, with fruitful interest, the napalm-courtesy granted many years ago (in the "Virus 100" compilation in which "ours" stunned the well-known "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" of Kennedyan-memory) ennobling in his own way, the scathing "The Great And The Good".
"Diplomatic Immunity" in not even two miserable minutes of exasperating intensity, "Strading Purposefully Backwards," the long title track or again the accidented "All Hail The Grey Dawn" apparently abolish with ease and without particular dilemmas, a substantial part of the pseudo-musical/aggressive "fluff" coined by entire legions of new, "muscular," (all too often) inconclusive hc/metal-noisers of the last hour.
The Code Is Red… Long Live The Napalm.