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Wednesday 11 January 2017

Napalm Death - Fear Emptiness Despair


Downwards!

I had a strange feeling to go and listen to all the oft-forgotten mid-career "groovy" Napalm records recently. In one day I chained this along with the three that followed it, and out of all the "non-grind" records the band put out, I can still confirm that Fear Emptiness Despair is my favorite. Perhaps that is just a subconscious thing though, as four tracks from this record appeared on the "best of" record that Earache put out (Noise For Music's Sake) and "Twist The Knife (Slowly)" was bizarrely featured on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. 

Subjectively though, I feel that Fear Emptiness Despair *fits* into the Napalm Death discography, and whilst, yes, the three albums that follow it are logical progressions of this type of sound, they strike a form of duality where I feel they simply do not fit into the logical progression of Napalm Death. I don't mean it as a diss, but reflecting back, I can't see how the dots were joined, especially as the band performed a neck-snapping side step back into grindcore with Enemy Of The Music Business soon after. 

Regardless of my weird feelings, Fear Emptiness Despair has the best production out of the four "groovy" records and also is by far the heaviest. Check it out below x7. 



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