NAPALM DEATH
Noise For Music's Sake
(Earache Records)
153:30min

Considering the influential status of NAPALM within the extreme underground and the number of songs / releases that have seen the light of day ever since the band originally started out, it’s actually kinda strange that a compilation album of their "best" tracks took so long to get released (no, I’m not counting 1991’s "Death By Manipulation" here as it was more of an EP collection). But "Noise For Music’s Sake" goes way beyond that and is far more than just a cheaply thrown together collection of wellknown material. This is a massive double album, featuring 56 tracks in total – known stuff and not so popular / rare material. Disc one is dedicated to the band’s back catalogue on Earache Records and features the most important tunes from their "Scum" debut of 1986 up till 1998’s "Words From The Exit Wound". Unfortunately NOT in chronological order, therefore the listening pleasure suffers a little bit from the different sound / production qualities. But anyway, of course you’ll get to hear all of your favorites, including ‘You Suffer’, ‘Siege Of Power’, ‘Greed Killing’, ‘Suffer The Children’, ‘Mass Appeal Madness’, the DEAD KENNEDYS cover ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’ and so on and so forth – 27 tracks in total here. Disc number two opens up with the entire 6 songs from 1989’s "Mentally Murdered" EP, followed by ‘Pride Assassin’, which was taken from 1991’s "Mass Appeal Madness" EP. I don’t really see the need to release these tracks on here again as they have already been part of the "Death By Manipulation" compilation. ‘Avalanche Master Song’ is a cover of a GODFLESH tune, recorded live in London 1990, with a guest appearance of GODFLESH’s Justin himself. Totally weird and not really my taste at all, but an interesting experience anyway. Tracks 9 – 14 is material that partly appeared on a free 7" (originally included in the "Utopia Banished" vinyl edition) and partly on the "The World Keeps Turning" EP (and they furthermore later on got used all together as bonus tracks on the CD re-release of "Utopia Banished" as well). ‘Truth Drug’ and ‘Living In Denial’ were originally bonus tracks on the limited edition version of "Fear, Emptiness, Despair", while tracks 17 – 20 all appeared on various rare releases (compilations, split-releases or whatever). The disc closes with three live tracks from 1986 / ’87. And if that’s still not enough for you, let me tell you that "Noise For Music’s Sake" comes with a fat booklet (that features liner notes, interviews, pics etc.) as well as a very detailed and highly interesting NAPALM DEATH family tree. So, all in all this is obviously of interest to all the NAPALM die hards in a similar way as to people who didn’t own any (or little) regular releases of the godfathers of Grind. Highly recommended! All further info at: www.earache.com

Frank Stöver

Frank Stöver

Related reviews / interviews:
NAPALM DEATH - Coded Smears And More Uncommon Slurs (Rick Peart)
NAPALM DEATH - Scum (Laurent Ramadier (audio side) / Frank Stöver (DVD side))
NAPALM DEATH - Apex Predator - Easy Meat (Rafael Bracero)
NAPALM DEATH - The Code Is Red... Long Live The Code (Laurent Ramadier)
NAPALM DEATH - Utilitarian (Julián “Quarantined” Nuñez)
NAPALM DEATH - Leaders Not Followers' Part 2 (Roy Kristensen)

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