About a dacade ago and then again last year, Seattle’s proto-grungers, Melvins and Birmingham’s grindcore originators, Napalm Death hit the road with their double-header Savage Imperial Death March tours – scorching the earth and damaging hearing wherever they went. Now, they have emerged together from the studio, having turned their relationship into something more solid and lasting.
The disc that has emerged, Savage Imperial Death March, is a true collaboration and not a split album with sperate songs from each band. The resulting material is new, covers-free and as extreme in its sonic onslaught as anyone might reasonably expect. Eardrum blasting, cacophonous storms of doom metal and energetic punk rock riffing rub shoulders with discordant and disorientating electronic industrial psychedelia that is anything but easy listening. In fact, the only levity comes with a vamp on Van Halen’s keyboard introduction to “Jump”, as the tempest finally fades away.
The charmingly named, “Throwing Coins into the Fountain of Fuck” hits the ground running with Napalm Death front man Barney Greenway’s vocals growling amidst a formidable barrage of aural violence and at the other end of the album, the unhinged tornado of “Death Hour” blasts away like the Butthole Surfers at their most wigged out and wayward. Things don’t calm down one bit between these tunes either. “Some Kind of Antichrist” starts out like a full-on cavalry charge before wandering off on a distinctly unsettling tangent, while “Awful Handwriting” and “Comparison is the Thief of Joy” lay down dark electronic cut ups and fried loops and drones, just for starters. In fact, while Savage Imperial Death March may not be especially easy on the ear and will probably not be heard by a particularly broad audience, it catches the spirit of these ever-more uncertain times perfectly – totally unburnished, in all their raw and unvarnished chaos and confusion.
