Napalm Death - Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism

Angry Metal Guy

It’s that time again. Time for Napalm Death to sandblast your socio-political ineptitude with a tumult of grinding death. However, this year’s review comes with a revelation… A man usually possessed of (mostly) upstanding taste, our very own Dr. A. N. Grier, has some less than pleasant things to say about these beloved Brummy battlers. Food for thought next time he tells you “DevilDriver used to be good…” It’s genuinely hard for me to comprehend someone taking a strong dislike to Napalm Death because, above all else, they represent a seal of quality. At this point in their career the band have managed to command their blast-happy frenzy and deathly breakdowns with the kind of fluidity most acts can only imagine. But experimentation has never been far from their arsenal, and new album Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism is no exception. In a career that spans excellent to reliable, the only real question is: which category does this sixteenth record belong to?

The answer is the latter. It’s been some time since Napalm Death meddled only in punk abandon. Very early on the band began to incorporate a prevalent death metal flavor and, by and large, haven’t looked back since. Early albums Harmony Corruption and Utopia Banished made the original emphasis but, somewhere amidst the breakdowns and blasts, Napalm Death have always been keen to tentatively elaborate on other influences too. Throes… ensures their dalliances with alternative genres are as evident as possible. But it does so amidst atypical Napalm Death fare. The result is an album with a very odd sense of flow.

Throes… immediately blasts into life with “Fuck the Factoid.” That blackened chill that Anaal Nathrakh utilize to such devastating effect is instantly recognizable. Barney Greenway’s vocals remain utterly cataclysmic. While his tone isn’t quite as guttural as it once was, he still sounds legitimately furious, which is important. Rage is a key requirement for the genre, but nobody wants to hear another middle-aged Robb Flynn pretending to be angry about the state of an industry that has made them rich. Instead, Greenway still sounds desperate to connect boot with neck. That kind of vitriol incorporates perfectly with the buoyant hardcore grooves of “That Curse of Being in Thrall.” It’s only with “Joie De Ne Pas Vivre” that the record’s real personality begins to permeate. The song is an sinister clanging industrial piece replete with unsettling rasping vocals. Soon enough “Invigorating Clutch” and particularly “Amoral” continue to lead this altered beast with a chain of promising post-punk a la Tau Cross. Napalm Death are clearly feeling creative, but it has an odd effect. As perfected as their norm is, it’s almost – fucking almost – beginning to sound rote next to their obvious desire to expand.

There can be no denying that, above all else, Napalm Death know how to riff. “Fluxing of the Muscle” serves up a mid-pace rhythm familiar to modern Testament, while the title track grinds more than just teeth. However, multiple listens later, and I still can’t quite summon these songs to mind, and that’s a problem. Much has been made of the band’s revolving door of members over the years but drummer Danny Herrera has cemented his place in metal history. His instant acceleration and convoluted fills never fail to impress and Throes… never deviates from the pattern. Shane Embury’s bass is a little lost in the mix, but thanks to Herrera and guitarist Mitch Harris, the rhythm section remains threateningly robust. Even in the wake of the warped noise-infused closing cut, which feels somewhat tacked on.

When Napalm Death release an album, it’s always cause for attention. But with such a storied discography, it’s redundant to expect potency like The Code is Red… Long Live the Code through to Utilitarian to persist. Apex Predator – Easy Meat was reliable if unremarkable, and Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism rumbles along the same lines. Any fan of the band will enjoy the album, and rightly so. Unfortunately, it’s undeniable that, a few noteworthy riffs aside, it’s actually the musical deviations that demand the most attention here. Napalm Death won’t be dethroned any time soon. They’re still royalty and this record does very little to supplant that notion. Put it on, burn down the walls and then add it to the collection. But as a wise man once said “time waits for no slave” and, experimentation aside, this kind of battery is beginning to feel increasingly comfortable…

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Century Media Records
Websites: facebook.com/officialnapalmdeath
Releases Worldwide: September 18th, 2020

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The Quietus

Napalm Death’s screeds against society's ills have always had a prophetic feel to them. And yet, while they have been fighting against the dangers of capitalism and social injustice since the height of Thatcher’s reign, the Brummie grindstitution have never come across preachy in their efforts to warn us of the precipice humanity has been recklessly dangling from for decades.

As world economies begin to enter a second recession in just over ten years due to an insidious disease that’s currently running roughshod through us, some might say we’ve finally overshot said precipice and are on a rapid descent to a cataclysmic fall – and perhaps we should’ve listened harder to such screamed warnings. But throughout all the sociopolitical upheaval and internal turmoil affecting each and every one of us this year to varying degrees of distress, you can still count on Napalm Death to deliver a grindcore polemic of the highest order – a band acting as a beacon of truth, consistency and stability during the most uncertain times of our generation.

This might not mean much to those who are struggling to pay rent or maintain their (physical and/or mental) health right now, but art – even art of such reality-based themes – can be a source of strength and a welcome form of escapism during even the darkest of days. The aptly-titled Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism is the band’s sixteenth LP and it’s certainly a cause for celebration. It finds Napalm Death acting as a self-contained sonic firestorm on a record that features furious tracks, as expected, but also some of their finest experiments to date.

With the ever-productive Shane Embury leading the songwriting charge (he wrote every damn track on this LP), there’s a cohesion to the construction even as stylistic diversity gets pushed to the forefront on numerous songs. ‘Fuck the Factoid’, ‘That Curse of Being in Thrall’, the hardcore punk discharge of ‘Zero Gravitas Chamber’ and the rather punishing title track are blindingly aggressive and vital in their adherence to the tenets of a mongrel subgenre Napalm Death had a massive pioneering hand in. They all twist and turn at a frenetic pace in the almost-coming-off-the-rails manner we’ve become accustomed to from ND over the years, thanks primarily to drummer Danny Herrera’s punk-yet-metal-precise playing style and Barney Greenway’s passionate and palpably intense vocal delivery.

However, it’s the aforementioned statement-making outlier tracks that cause the biggest impressions, interspersed between frantic grind, not to mention noxious death metal-tinged hardcore emissions such as ‘Backlash Just Because’ and ‘Fluxing of the Muscle’. Over the years Napalm Death have given us glimpses of their noise rock, post-punk, art-rock and industrial influences, whether it be on sections of songs, the occasional full track, or on unexpected covers (their take on the Cardiacs’ ‘To Go Off and Things’ is worth checking out). For this album, though, those subgenres and others are wielded like central features, yet interestingly, the intensity overall never drops off even when the tempos do.

‘Joie De Ne Pas Vivre’ sounds like avant-garde black metal’s Dødheimsgard locking horns creatively with Big Black. The long-standing Killing Joke influence emerges fully in emphatic fashion on the skewed grooves of ‘Amoral’, with Greenway rivalling Jaz Coleman in his rabble rousing delivery, and there’s also Killing Joke DNA mixed with that of Napalm and Voivod on ‘Contagion’. Elsewhere, ‘Invigorating Clutch’ has a quasi Godflesh or early Swans clang to its pounding mechanics while remaining unquestionably Napalm Death, while closer ‘A Belly Full of Salt and Spleen’ is almost like a bookend to the title track which opened their last album,Apex Predator - Easy Meat. It's an industrial noisescape with prominent carcinogenic bass lines which act as a rumbling foundation for Greenway’s effective returned use of monotone clean singing.

If we are all still around in time to cast an eye over the final history of Napalm Death, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism will no doubt sit alongside its predecessor at the upper echelon of the band’s storied discography, just below truly important early works such as Scum, From Enslavement to Obliteration and Harmony Corruption. Never happy to rest on their laurels, or anyone else’s, Napalm Death continue to exist to push sonic boundaries and challenge dogmas, and it’s great to hear them have fun here while further broadening the vitriolic sound they’ve defined into a singular movement.

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