Grinding away

In England, where the distinctions between hardcore punk and speed metal were not as rigid as stateside, the band's 1987 Scum sloughed off the restraints of both like layers of dead skin, slashing through 28 noise-addled bursts in 33 minutes. Hence, grindcore. The discernible "songs" lacked form, their mini-movements crashing into one another (scream into headlong churn), breaking meter at will, piling inhuman speed on buckling atonal riffs. Buried within was "You Suffer," a single seismorgasmic bleat of bass-drum-feedback-shout clocking in at exactly one second. It was the end of something -- perhaps only of hardcore's faster-is-better.

Scum and its follow-up, From Enslavement to Obliteration, positioned Napalm Death almost as far from mainstream heavy metal (Metallica, Slayer) as the metallers were from Sonic Youth. For heavy metal, which thrives in the murky corners of dark one-way alleys and feeds on symbolic extremes, the lure of the void Napalm Death opened was irresistible. When the mainstream metal audience flocked to the alternative party in 1991, there was still a small but dedicated audience for grindcore -- and that audience, along with Napalm Death and others, has defined the boundaries of metal ever since.

Meanwhile, the unmitigated violence the group committed against the mere concepts of melody and song inspired avant-jazz guru John Zorn. Championing their chaos, Zorn added reed-blowing, spy themes, and other ephemera; and he broke "free hardcore" on the world with Naked City. Later he picked up Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris and formed the improv-grindcore unit Painkiller.

Flash-forward to last year: Napalm Death have worn through nearly a dozen members. Since Scum, they've reinvented themselves with an elemental ferocity on 1990's Harmony Corruption and 1994's Fear, Emptiness, Despair. Yet Diatribes finds them taking less for granted than at any time this decade. The opening track, "Greed Killing," is instantly the most accessible thing they've ever done; the next track contains the first shards of traditional melody they've ever used; and further on they briefly abandon the one-dimensional gravel-throated yowl that's been a constant (and their biggest commercial liability) from day one.

It's a gutsy, invigorating effort at a time when grindcore has become utterly predictable. The trademark cutthroat vocal lashings that were Napalm Death's trademark have become the genre's defining cliché (from Cookie Monster to cookie cutter). So, for that matter, have the detuned thrashing, the hyperventilating percussion, the Flight of the Bumble Bee riffs wound into endless contortions, and the polysyllabic rantings.

For a unit that made a name for itself with matchless brawn, the best efforts on Diatribes highlight Napalm's restraint. "Cursed To Crawl" lies back and stokes a simmering groove before settling on a scurrilous, post-apocalyptic riff. "Cold Forgiveness," the album's slowest number, breathes with a shifty, haunting intensity that carries over into the thrashier material on the album's second half. Throughout Diatribes, feedback squalls, metallic whines/drones, subharmonic scuffles, and jarring bursts of distortion knit themselves into a paranoid background collage. Adding a cabal of call-and-response patterns ping-ponging between the guitars, "Take the Straw" and "Just Rewards" suggest a tribal, less robotic industrial music with the axes standing in for power tools. Even a seemingly tired old trick like slamming an almost mechanized militaristic stomp into chaotic amphetamine stride still manages to be vaguely threatening. Sample lyric from the title track: "Lie down/And cry all you can/The machine rolls over you." Yeah, that sounds about right.

So Napalm remain comfortably beyond the reach of MTV, but pop music keeps getting heavier. Two albums last year illustrated their predicament. Using the one-second statement of "You Suffer" as a model, Anal Cunt's Top 40 Hits turned blip-length noise bursts into a hilariously monotonous joke, in effect declaring the end of grindcore. On the other hand, former death-metal guitarist Billy Corgan included a slightly updated grindcore number on Smashing Pumpkins' double album, complete with a midsong degeneration into noise, called "Tales of a Scorched Earth," in effect declaring grindcore's entrance into mainstream pop music. Which leaves Napalm Death squarely in the middle -- out of their element, almost by definition, but for the time being, at least, pushing forward.

Napalm Death play an all-ages show at the Rat Tuesday, February 20.