Reviews list for Napalm Death - From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)

I can still vividly recall my reaction to hearing Birmingham grindcore godfathers Napalm Death for the first time when I was just an innocent & naïve early teenager. I was sitting in my bedroom in the dark listening to a late-night underground metal radio program & recording it with my cassette deck so that I could give it some repeat listens throughout the coming week. It was late in the show & I was getting very tired when a track from the brand new “Mentally Murdered” E.P. was given an airing. I believe it was the closer “No Mental Effort” & it made me stand straight up with new life having been breathed into my weary body. I simply couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The music coming out of my headphones was the most savage thing I’d ever heard in my life &, even though I found it to be awfully confronting, I also found myself captivated & intrigued. It would only be a matter of weeks before I’d head into the city with all of my pocket money to purchase a copy of a compilation CD that included both of Napalm Death’s first two records (i.e. their 1987 debut full-length “Scum” & 1988 sophomore album “From Enslavement to Obliteration”) as well as four of the five tracks from 1988’s “The Curse” single. Upon returning home I’d very quickly find that the sound of Napalm Death’s earlier material leaned noticeably closer to the crust punk side of the grindcore equation compared to what I’d heard from “Mentally Murdered” which had a more familiar & relatable death metal edge. It wasn’t as instantly appealing if I’m being honest but I persisted as this music simply sounded so vital & important to my young ears, not to mention dangerous & exciting.

The debut album “Scum” was very rough in its execution & production & relied heavily on raw energy & the battering blast-beats of Mick Harris (Scorn/Defecation/Extreme Noise Terror/PainKiller/Unseen Terror) for its appeal. It was very much a tale of two halves too with the A side (featuring Godflesh/Jesu/Fall of Because mastermind Justin Broadrick on guitar & Scorn bassist Nik Bullen) being noticeably stronger than the B side (which featured Carcass guitarist Bill Steer & future Prophecy of Doom bassist Jim Whitely). It presented a young band that was clearly still fine-tuning their style while “From Enslavement To Obliteration” sees them offering up a sound that takes all of those initial elements & pushes them to even greater extremes, only it does it with a little more maturity than “Scum” could muster. Whitely & Bullen had both left the scene by this stage, being replaced by Napalm Death’s longest term member in Shane Embury (Unseen Terror/Lock Up/Brujeria/Meathook Seed/Venomous Concept). Broadrick had also departed in order to focus on a string of his own industrial projects so Embury would join Harris, Steer & vocalist Lee Dorrian (Cathedral/Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine/With The Dead) to create a more stable lineup that could focus on delivering what they hoped would be the most extreme recording ever produced at the time. Did they succeed? Shit yeah, they did!

“From Enslavement To Obliteration” takes a very similar stylistic approach to “Scum” in that it’s built on a base that’s been borrowed from crust punk. It’s only very short for a full-length album, featuring 22 songs with an average duration of around a minute in length. The opening track (my personal favourite & somewhat of a classic for me as a youngster) “Evolved As One” can work to present the listener with a false sense of security as it sounds nothing like the rest of the tracklisting, instead opting for a much slower & more industrial approach that sounds uncannily like Broadrick’s Godflesh project that was recording it’s self-titled debut E.P. at around the same time. It’s hard to imagine that this was coincidental given the close ties there. The other 21 songs are short bursts of blindingly fast & outrageously aggressive grindcore with Dorrian going completely nuts over the top. This is a tighter & more organized Napalm Death than we'd heard on “Scum” with Steer’s guitar technique having come one quite a bit in the time between the two recording sessions.

This all sounds very positive for the album’s chances of eclipsing the 3.5 star rating I awarded to “Scum” now, doesn’t it? So why is it exactly that I’ve found myself opting to go with the same rating for “From Enslavement To Obliteration” when it’s generally regarded as the more classic release then? I guess it comes down to taste & personal preference really. You see, I’m simply not that big a fan of the punkier end of grindcore, particularly when it’s presented in such a primitive form. Dorrian’s psychotic, rabid-dog style barking can be pretty tough going at times & (opening track aside) there really aren’t too many tracks that stand out as genuine highlights. “Impressions”, “Blind To The Truth” & “Sometimes” come the closest & I don’t think it’s too surprising that they’re the most relentlessly blasting tracks with the smallest punk components. Despite the fact that there’s not a single weak song included across the 22 on offer, I do think that the rest of the album sounds a little samey with a lot of the material being based on the exact same concepts.

So, I guess the outcome of all of this is that (much like it’s older sibling “Scum”) “From Enslavement To Obliteration” served more of a novelty role in my childhood than anything else. Even though it's the better record of the two, I’ve never seen it as essential listening (even for grindcore) & prefer Napalm Death’s later material which I find to be more creative & engaging. It did however give the underground metal scene a major shot in the arm & saw the extremity levels going up a few notches very quickly so it deserves a lot of credit for that & fans of bands like Brutal Truth, Repulsion & Nasum will definitely want to make themselves accustomed with it, if only for its importance in what was to come.