Originally published by L.S. Media March 29th 2012.
L.S. Media Rating ****
There’s a reason why some areas of the U.K. seem to be able to become entrenched with producing one genre of music with more frequency than others. Sometimes it’s just the nature of the area, the background and social history to the city that produces the music. Liverpool is defined in parts by the Beatles and the sailors who bought the music from America with them after World War Two. The dreaming spires and University colleges of Cambridge will have Pink Floyd forever stamped upon the roads and parks and be considered as one of the natural homes of Progressive Rock.
Birmingham and the West Midlands will always be associated with the metallic, the bang of lump hammer on steel, the metal machine, the grind of the foundry and the loud, dirty, sweat inducing men covered in the dust of a thousand car parts which inspired the likes of Black Sabbath and Esoteric at its heart.
Out of this heat and grinding noise came one of the best grind core Metal bands ever to play on a stage and possibly one of the very few to make the sleepy Wiltshire town of Salisbury stand up and take notice of the genre, the impressive and extreme Napalm Death.
The band that formed in 1981 in Birmingham has undergone several line-up changes over the years but what remains is music that gives the listener the feeling they have gone several punishing rounds with Lennox Lewis and followed that up by being the first seven stone weakling to face the Welsh forward line all by themselves. Crushed under foot, battered senseless by the relentless and overpowering music, the fan still gets up, smiles and says “Want to go again?”
Utilitarian is the 15th studio album by the band and features Mark Greenway on vocals, Shane Embury on bass, Mitch Harris on guitar and Danny Herrera on drums. It might be a world away from the days Nik Napalm’s (Nicholas Bullen) screaming death-like entrancing vocals and in a way it is as Mark Greenway makes Nik Napalm look, with all the best will in the world, like children’s cartoon hero, SpongeBob Square Pants with an extremely sore throat. His vocals on songs such as Everyday Pox and The Wolf I Feed are not for the fainthearted, it would be ridiculous to go into this album without building up some stamina, some way of protecting the senses because as soon as the incredible cacophony of Utilitarian hits you, it’s going to keep going, there is no red light. This is music, pure and persistent music from the foundry floor.
Don’t worry if the vocals pass you by, it takes a while to get used to it, but if you liked the music of Sabbat, Cathedral and Carcass then Utilitarian will shake the walls and leave the neighbours gasping for breath.
A storming return, an album that destroys any chance of getting any work done for a couple of weeks as you will listen over and over again.
Ian D. Hall