NAPALM DEATH - Fathers of grind.

If you listen to the first two Napalm Death albums ("Scum" & "From Enslavement To Obliteration") today they are still just as awesome as the moment they were released, over 20 years ago.

This "classic" line up version of Napalm Death: Mick Harris - Drums, Bill Steer - Guitar, Lee Dorrian - Vocals & Shane Embury - Bass is about as close to the birthseed of pure Grindcore that you can get.

There is a wealth of discussion and argument over who was the first Grindcore band. There were many bands before ND that influenced them and many bands playing speedy thrashy punky stuff. Repulsion, Seige, Terrorizer, Extreme Noise Terror and many more. However the term "Grindcore" (And even the term "Blast Beat") was coined by Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris so this is where the argument for "First Grindcore Band" is settled. There were bands before that were the unformed pure matter but Napalm Death was the mutation that evolved.

This classic line up of ND have influenced more bands than anyone could count to be sure, and gone on to split into other bands (Carcass, Cathedral) that have been just as much as an influence. Napalm Death and Carcass transcend the boundaries of what is "Heavy Metal" and what is "Punk" to appeal to both sides.

If you are a stranger to early Napalm Death or only familiar with their later "Death Metal" sound do check out below.



Pure energy. Napalm Death were probably forced a lot into the media spotlight in the late 80s because of their extreme sound, they were tapped into by the BBC who featured them on a few TV shows:





And my favourite



OK, that's actually Bill and Jeff from Carcass but it's still awesome.

But this "mainstream novelty act" twist certainly shot ND into the public eye and those that actually understood and liked the music for what what it was certainly were turned.

Worth to point out that Napalm Death has no original members in the band today, and that the Classic line up I speak of were actually not the line up responsible for most of ND's most famous songs of that era "The Kill", "Scum" and "You Suffer". - these were on the A side of their first album which had a different line up all together (Mick Harris, Nick Bullen and Justin Broadrick) Sadly the originators of this whole genre are not the ones best known for it.

Napalm Death - worth the bigging up today!