I don't plan to make such a huge deal about this album. i just feel it necessary to make a few points. (this is my first ever review).
This was the first album i heard from napalm death. what i was doing is looking for good, old fashion grindcore/death metal, whichever came first. i found the grindcore, but not the good. Dont get me wrong, this album has its ups, but it has more downs. it might be that i jsut dont know what im talking about, but before this, i had been listening to cannibal corpse. So thats what i was expected. Napalm Death is nothing like them. actually i think that thats probably a good thing. there needs to be a difference among bands of the same genre. Napalm Death is no where near as grotesque as CC. So i thought that that would be bonus. whenever trying new bands, i always listen to their first album first because thats when b ands have all their ideas in their heads and lash them all out in their first album. then towards the end they start falling back a bit, adn eventually no one cares anymore. But NP is a little different.
im not gonna lie, i almost fell asleep listening to the first 6 songs. This is all just my opinion, fell free to think differently and call me an ass, but i thought is was so severely boring. cause basically tracks 2-6 all sound the EXACT same. some are just shorter/longer than others. the most change in these tracks is the song titles, which leads me to believe that lyrics were different too. which i cant say for sure, becasue im one of those people that cant understand what death metal bands are saying. its all muffled to me.
the drum breakdown for instinct of survival was superb. i like the bulletting drums of these fast metal bands. However for the first 6 tracks its the same breakdown everytime. can we please have some difference in the drums. by #7 it changed, but by then i was drooling with boredom. even the beats and lyrical setups were the same. maybe it was their plan to do that, i certainly hope so, because i really dont like it.
what really irks me in this album is that all the tracks are like 30 seconds to a minute long. So when i hear the same drum breakdown in each song, it leads me to believe that they had nothing else to do. if they pieced 2-6 together, i would have 0 complaints, but each song is not flowing smoothly into the next. It's just cutting off and then moving to the next track. so im forced to believe that the band just had no creativity impulse with the drums.
the guitars in this Album however are fantastic and im just gonna leave it at that. perioid. end of discussion.
by the time you get to seige of power, things really start to pick themselves up, and it's like the first portion of this album never existed. a switchup in musical style meats you in seige of power. Which is what kept me from falling over dead. after this track things start getting a little creative, adn actually a little musical too. I absolutely love it when metal bands find their musical senses. it gets really boring when every death/black metal band out there does the same thing with the same sound and the same message. i must give NP credit, they dont do that. they DO allow a sense of rythm get a hold of their style instead of going insane with guitars adn smashing drums, and breaking eardrums. Which is perfectly fine, but only if use that technique sparingly. have some transition between the loud, the quite, adn the mediums. which i can credit NP for doing. only complaint is that they waited a little too long at the start of this album. like i said above, if they stuck all the small tracks in with eachother to form a whole 4 minute track, this album would be damn near perfect.
my final complaint is probably just my own ignorance. but do to these small tracks, i find it very difficult to be able to find my comfort zone in this album. basically what happens with me is that when the drums adn bass start going off, im finding the central beat adn connecting it to the lyrics, so that then the song flows through my ears no matter how heavy it is. i cant do that with these 30 second tracks. every single time, i'll find the beat and start getting relaxed into the song, then BAM! The track cuts off and silence and lose all sense opf whatever i had. it ruins the song every time. which is why my most favorite track is seige of power. i found my comfort zone almost immediately and had about 4 minutes to play with that feeling.
some things that i like include the vocals, yeah they are hard to understand, but its the way that they are played out in each track. they fit with the beat, and i like that echoing sense they have, as if they were on stage right in front of you. the words dont just go like *zip* *zip* *zip*. (cant understand the words). its as if you turn out the lyrics yourself when they do this. and therefore it is your choice to make the song what you want, even if it only 30 seconds long. the vocals save this album as is from certain death. along with the guitars.
my simple conclusion is this, if we pieced all the small songs together, and switched up the drums a bit, this would be a finominal album. (excuse me if i mispelled finominal). just because i love death metal for the chugging and rapid fast-paced music, ill definitely keep this album, but its not going to be the very absolute top of my music list. so good job NP, if however you are not a die hard grindcore/death metal band, i would try to avoid this album.
