Album Review: Apex Predator - Easy Meat by Napalm Death

With much of the metal scene in a permanent state of superficiality, Napalm Death’s righteous fury and utter disregard for routine sonic styles mark the grindcore legends out as one of the few truly subversive bands around. But even by their own standards, Apex Predator – Easy Meat is startling. Thematically centred on the horror of industrialised slave labour in the modern world, the band’s 15th studio album revels in the perversity of such compassionate and humane lyrical ideas being tethered to music that seeks to leave real scars.

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Birmingham England's Napalm Death have always managed to remain true to themselves as a band. Despite many musical phases -- some of which alienated early fans during the 1990s when they issued albums that deliberately experimented with production, melody, texture, and dynamics -- they have always managed to sound not only urgent, but have pushed extreme music to suit their aims as a group rather than the other way around. Apex Predator- Easy Meat is ND's 15th studio album.

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Napalm Death never disappoint. Since 1987's Scum, the UK grindcore legends have consistently delivered a long list of influential and highly revered releases. Their latest offering, Apex Predator - Easy Meat, is no exception. Napalm Death haven't slowed down with age; if anything, they've gotten even more aggressive and dynamic over the years.

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It’s difficult to review a new release from Napalm Death in the same way that it’s hard to review a new release from Motorhead, Slayer or AC/DC. While they may try a few new things out here and there, you know what you’re going to get going on, and you have a pretty good idea of whether you’re going to like it or not. Apex Predator - Easy Meat, the latest release from the British grindcore pioneers, is no exception.

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Napalm Death are one of the most virulent bands in metal: the legendary UK grindcore crew's violent, stream-of-consciousness operates like a punk pandemic. Fed by the cesspools of unrest and corruption in the world, their inspiration flares up and runs wild, feeding off whatever styles are at the ready. Sometimes their visceral sound skews hardcore punk, and sometimes it's more death-metal influenced.

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Napalm Death couldn't have hit upon a more fitting title for their 15th album: A good 30-odd years after their formation in coal-dusted Birmingham, England, the grindcore godfathers are now at the apex of their career. Their secret? They've never stopped. That's why the riffs are still sharp, the grooves are still bottomless, and Barney Greenway's voice still drips vitriol over lyrics that cut to the quick of modern society's ills.

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Napalm Death have had the line-up of vocalist/lyricist Mark 'Barney' Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mitch Harris, and drummer Danny Herrera, in place for more or less a quarter of a century now. The legendary grindcore band famed for their creation and popularisation of the most explosive metal subgenre (they were Sir John Peel's favourite band for a reason) have really been on a remarkable run of form since around 2000's Enemy Of The Music Business. The main reason behind the creative success of subsequent albums such as Smear Campaign, Time Waits For No Slave, and Utilitarian is because Napalm, while maintaining the grinding gait founded on their establishment-baiting 1987 debut Scum, gradually introduced an experimental side into their signature sound without diluting the broiling fusion of grind, death metal and hardcore punk.

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Napalm Death — Apex Predator-Easy Meat (Century)Sixteen albums in, it seems impossible that our yobs of perpetual skepticism would still have anything to offer. But their momentum has held. Though the joke with the band is that’s it hasn’t contained an original member since the 1980s, it’s been pretty much the same group for 25 years. For the first few seasons the project existed, it was a vortex for the new loudness taking shape in Birmingham as much as a band, spinning off kids who’d go on to found all sorts of acts on the metal-hardcore-industrial continuum.

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Napalm Death, formed in 1982 by two teenage West Midlands anarcho-punks who’d depart before their band completed its first LP, has never forsaken the catalytic rage of growing up in Thatcherite England. Nor has this extreme-metal institution ever stopped evolving, even after its present members — English vocalist Mark “Barney” Greenway and bassist Shane Embury, American guitarist Mitch Harris and drummer Danny Herrera — converged in 1992. The band’s 15th studio album, a savage condemnation of corporate depredation, was sparked by the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, in which a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, claiming the lives of more than 1,100 workers.

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