Napalm Death
Time Waits For No Slave

THE REVIEW

It is said that as time goes by, people's musical tastes become increasingly softer, and as we grow older, we gradually abandon extreme music for something more melodic. However, listening to this new album, it is clear that the English have remained, attitudinally speaking, the same fervent kids from twenty years ago.

Considered as relentless pioneers of the terroristic side of metal, the English from Birmingham return today with "Time Waits For No Slaves," a new studio album that reaffirms them as an unstoppable war tank. It is also true that the current sound of the latest full-length significantly deviates from the brutal shards of foundational works like “Scum” and “From Enslavement To Obliteration,” which have been replaced by a sound closer to thrash-death metal. "Time Waits For No Slave" is the 13th full-length of the Birmingham band and continues the musical journey started in 2000 with the furious ‘Enemy Of The Music Business’ and the commendable three works that followed. However, as in the two previous albums, a melodic sense is noticeable, appealing even to those who do not appreciate the genre in consideration.

Describing the first three tracks of the full-length, "Strongarm", "Diktat", and "Work To Rule", one can feel an incessant fury, an iconoclastic and genuinely devastating nature that strikes the ears of the daring listener with an incredibly deafening power. Structurally, I consider these first three songs as the most technical and fast-paced of the album in question, with ingenious guitar solutions, especially in the second half of the third. Perhaps the fury calms down slightly with "On The Brink Of Extinction" only to come back strong with the title track, a real knee to the stomach. In the tracks following the title track, we see the Birmingham "boys" still focused on speed and precision of the riffing and the rhythm section, especially when analyzing songs like "Life and Limb", "Fallacy Dominion", and "Downbeat Clique". The concluding part, in turn, offers in moments like "Passive Tense", the epic "Procrastination on the Empty Vessel", and "Feeling Redundant" an additional deceleration of structures that do not always succeed, however, in convincing the listener, losing traction towards the end.

Despite this latest work proving to be of great technical and lyrical depth that somehow rewards Napalm Death's tenacity, we are faced with a product that can no longer achieve the goal of keeping the original underground energy of grindcore intact. In my opinion, the work is qualitatively inferior to the lethal "Smear Campaign," maintaining a nearly sufficient level. Nonetheless, trying to stay optimistic, I believe that for the English band, after completing this work, some paths may lead them to a new youth.