Napalm Death - The Code Is Red... Long Live The Code
Century Media - CD 77587-2 - 2005
By Philip Whitehouse
The very first album review I ever wrote for Ultimate Metal was posted around April 2001. I wasn't even a member of the staff back then - in fact, I had just stumbled over the site after browsing over from Opeth's page. Back then, UM boss Mark was actively hunting for writers to contribute to the site, and as such had left an open invitation to contributors in the form of a publically accessable 'post new review' button. "What the hell!" I thought. I went on to post a review of an album that changed my perceptions of extreme music and introduced me to levels of musical ferocity I had previously never heard of. I reviewed Napalm Death's Scum.
So, here we are a full five years later - I've posted around 400 reviews, at a rough guess. I've seen bands deteriorate in quality with age, lose their way in experimentation, or just plain give up the ghost. But yet here I am with Napalm Death's most recent release, and the fact remains that thiis 24-year-old band still grinds pretty much all of it's competition into the dust. After the promising return to form that was 2002's Order Of The Leech, Napalm Death have lost guitarist Jesse Pintado, but still managed to come back with perhaps their best release to date - and considering their back catalogue, that's no mean feat.
This is an album of extremes from a band that have come to define the term - containing both their fastest material and some uncharacteristically down-tempo riffage, comprising their most punkish attitude yet their most unashamedly metallic savagery. Whether it's the 52 second aural mugging that is 'Right You Are' or the appearance of Jello Biafra on album highlight 'The Great And The Good' (imagine a track somewhere between 'Narcoleptic' and 'Greed Killing', then add Jello's inimitable style), Napalm Death have proved themselves to be just as vital and uncompromising a musical force as they have ever been.
Then comes the end of the album - the one-two sucker punch of 'Morale' and 'Our Pain Their Power'. Anyone who remembers the sheer 'what the fuck?' value of Scum's 'You Suffer' track will be in familiar territory here - albeit for entirely different reasons. Where that track destroyed conceptions of what music could/should be by blasting away for three seconds then ending, the two closing tracks on The Code Is Red... are equally destructive to preconceptions of what Napalm Death can/should do. 'Morale' is a down-tempo, doom-laden, nightmarish track fuelled by washes of reverb, Godflesh-esque industrial strenth mantra-drumming, and Barney moaning and chanting like a soul condemned to torture, before atmospheric ambience battles with increasingly torturous feedback, which builds to crescendo before dropping straight into 'Our Pain Their Power'. This is two minutes of clanking, disturbing screeching and background drones - a noisescape every bit as menacing as the grindcore face-removal the rest of the album consists of.
The rest of the grindcore scene, and indeed the rest of the extreme music world - pay attention. The goalposts have been moved again.
9.5/10
Jason Jordan's The Code Is Red... Long Live The Code review
Napalm Death's Official Website
Century Media's Official Website
Century Media - CD 77587-2 - 2005
By Philip Whitehouse
The very first album review I ever wrote for Ultimate Metal was posted around April 2001. I wasn't even a member of the staff back then - in fact, I had just stumbled over the site after browsing over from Opeth's page. Back then, UM boss Mark was actively hunting for writers to contribute to the site, and as such had left an open invitation to contributors in the form of a publically accessable 'post new review' button. "What the hell!" I thought. I went on to post a review of an album that changed my perceptions of extreme music and introduced me to levels of musical ferocity I had previously never heard of. I reviewed Napalm Death's Scum.
So, here we are a full five years later - I've posted around 400 reviews, at a rough guess. I've seen bands deteriorate in quality with age, lose their way in experimentation, or just plain give up the ghost. But yet here I am with Napalm Death's most recent release, and the fact remains that thiis 24-year-old band still grinds pretty much all of it's competition into the dust. After the promising return to form that was 2002's Order Of The Leech, Napalm Death have lost guitarist Jesse Pintado, but still managed to come back with perhaps their best release to date - and considering their back catalogue, that's no mean feat.
This is an album of extremes from a band that have come to define the term - containing both their fastest material and some uncharacteristically down-tempo riffage, comprising their most punkish attitude yet their most unashamedly metallic savagery. Whether it's the 52 second aural mugging that is 'Right You Are' or the appearance of Jello Biafra on album highlight 'The Great And The Good' (imagine a track somewhere between 'Narcoleptic' and 'Greed Killing', then add Jello's inimitable style), Napalm Death have proved themselves to be just as vital and uncompromising a musical force as they have ever been.
Then comes the end of the album - the one-two sucker punch of 'Morale' and 'Our Pain Their Power'. Anyone who remembers the sheer 'what the fuck?' value of Scum's 'You Suffer' track will be in familiar territory here - albeit for entirely different reasons. Where that track destroyed conceptions of what music could/should be by blasting away for three seconds then ending, the two closing tracks on The Code Is Red... are equally destructive to preconceptions of what Napalm Death can/should do. 'Morale' is a down-tempo, doom-laden, nightmarish track fuelled by washes of reverb, Godflesh-esque industrial strenth mantra-drumming, and Barney moaning and chanting like a soul condemned to torture, before atmospheric ambience battles with increasingly torturous feedback, which builds to crescendo before dropping straight into 'Our Pain Their Power'. This is two minutes of clanking, disturbing screeching and background drones - a noisescape every bit as menacing as the grindcore face-removal the rest of the album consists of.
The rest of the grindcore scene, and indeed the rest of the extreme music world - pay attention. The goalposts have been moved again.
9.5/10
Jason Jordan's The Code Is Red... Long Live The Code review
Napalm Death's Official Website
Century Media's Official Website
There's a reason why some bands are influential and this CD offers pretty good proof.
