I think my first exposure to Napalm Death was the BBC Arena documentary on heavy metal that aired in 1989. I was just getting into metal so this looked really interesting to a curious teen. There was a whole week dedicated to metal and I watched all of it. It introduced me to so many bands (I finally got to hear Zeppelin for the first time, and realised that they were boring wank) but also heard Slayer and Metallica and a lot of other bands that I’d only heard of. But the band that really stood out, the band that confused the hell out of me was Napalm Death. I just didn’t get it. It was too fast, too noisy, and too weird. I moved on with my life and never gave them much thought, but it’s strange just how much that small bit of coverage made the band a household (ish) name.
The documentary
A few years later, probably around 1991, my school friend Andrew Bradshaw, my metal pusher, gave me a copy of Harmony Corruption. I raised an eyebrow and said that I wasn’t into it, they were too fast for me. He put my mind at ease and said they’d slowed down and it was a great album. I put the tape in my walkman after school on the walk to the bus depot and had my mind blown. This was so much heavier than the thrash metal I’d been listening to. And if this was they slowed down, I didn’t want to know what faster sounded like.
At home, I would only listen to it on headphones because I was sure my parents would laugh at me for listening to noise. So I would sit by the hifi, put my headphones on and have my mind blown by the heaviest thing I’d ever heard. If Reign in Blood was like being hit with a brick, Harmony Corruption is like having the whole wall repeatedly jump on you.
The album starts with a dull static drone purposefully too quiet, so you turn the album up and then, BANG! We’re off! A wall of noise comes crashing out at you, with Barney yelling Raaaaaaaaar! in his best caveman bellow. It scared the crap out of me the first time I heard it.
I hadn’t heard blast beats before so I had no idea what to make of it. The sheer dissonance of it all really pushed me in ways I’d never encountered and it took me a long time to get my head around what was going on. This was the album that introduced me to the double kick roll. Yes the thrash bands had been using it but that slow death version was something that it turns out that my life had been missing. The beginning Unfit Earth with that slow jog on the kick drums still puts a massive smile on my face.
The album highlight is Suffer the Children, somehow it’s almost jaunty, there’s something upbeat about it that makes it stand out on the album. Seeing as it’s an attack on organised religion, it might be a bit jarring narratively, but it’s amazing in a mosh pit.
For a band renowned for speed I really love their slow and sludgy side. The last 90 seconds of Suffer is just the best slow chugging metal, Mich Harris is just the best drummer and those kicks are amazing.
It’s really sad that the band have disowned Harmony Corruption and its follow up Utopia Banished. Apparently the band felt they were too influenced by American death metal. These albums changed how I thought of metal and brought a new world of extremity to my musical tastes so it’s tough to see that the band think so poorly of them.
But that doesn’t really matter, this was year zero for my adventure into truly heavy metal and I’ll always love this album.
The ways of exile 