NAPALM DEATH — Scum (review)

NAPALM DEATH — Scum album cover Album · 1987 · Grindcore Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Warthur
A debut album where the first side was completed by one lineup and the second side was completed by an almost completely different lineup, with only one member performing on all the songs, isn't a promising start. Yet Napalm Death's Scum manages to transcend the chaos of its origins to present an intriguing musical vision. On the first side, the band are caught in a transitional state, moving from their crust punk origins into the their patented death metal-crust punk hybrid we now know and love as "grindcore", whereas the second side is a blistering avalanche of microtracks fully exploring the aesthetic possibilities of extremely brief songs. (It's the first side, though, which takes this idea to its illogical extreme with the 1.3 second long "You Suffer".)

Displaying just enough technical chops to tip off to the attentive listener that this isn't an accident - these dudes can play some crushingly brutal conventional death metal when they put their mind to it - Scum is a triumph of artistic experimentation over all semblance of common sense, and I love it for that.
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