Napalm Death
Noise For Music’s Sake (Earache)
by Tim Den
Finally, someone listened! Noise for Music’s Sake compiles the influential grindcore forefathers’ best moments and – most importantly – all the saliva-inducing rarities that I’ve been digging for years. It’s (almost) all here, folks: The bonus 3″ that came with limited editions of Utopia Banished, the two outtakes from Fear, Emptiness, Despair, the Cursed to Tour gem “Politics of Common Sense,” not to mention exclusive compilation tracks that’ve been AWOL since the late-’80s. I can’t tell you how fucking psyched I am that Earache and the band decided to clean out the vaults… Cuz even though the songs/sound quality of a lot of the rarities aren’t top-notch, they complete my (and every other ND enthusiast’s) collection with a thick-ass inlay book to boot. I mean, the two live songs at the end (the never released “The Traitor” and “Abattoir”) don’t necessarily make up for the absence of the Hatred Surge and Punk Is a Rotting Corpse demos or the missing Bullshit Detector #3 comp track, but that’s just me being a TOTAL completist.
At two discs, Noise for Music’s Sake does a great job of not only finding all the lost historical pieces, but of capturing the band’s every evolving phase. There are tracks from the spastic early days (“The Kill,” “You Suffer,” “Lucid Fairytale”), early-’90s death metal period (“Mass Appeal Madness,” “Judicial Slime,” “Suffer the Children”), and the “experimental” era (“Breed to Breathe,” “Next of Kin to Chaos,” “Hung”), plus different versions of classics such as “The World Keeps Turning” and “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” (the latter presented here in its original form, as it appeared on the Virus 100 Dead Kennedys tribute. It would later be re-recorded at twice the speed for Leaders Not Followers). I must whine a little, though: “Contemptuous” and not “Dementia Access”? “Low Point” and not more stuff off of Inside the Torn Apart (without a doubt the band’s best album from the experimental phase)? What’s up?
This is a must-have for all Napalm Death – and extreme metal – fans. If you’re already a disciple, Noise For Music’s Sake pretty much ties up all the loose ends. If you’re just getting into the band and are not sure where to begin (the band’s back catalog and constant-shifting sound can be intimidating), this will ease you into it with a comprehensive overview (even if the family tree inside the inlay fails to outline the band’s very beginnings). ESSENTIAL.
(43 W. 38th St. 2nd Fl. New York, NY 10018)
