#matthewaustin

Just like last year, today we’ll present, by writer, the best albums we discovered or rediscovered during 2015. And Thursday we’ll post what we think are the best albums of the year. This year The Hairsplitter is teaming up with The Collapsar, so be sure to check out the full compiled list on their site.

As always, in the immortal words of James Brown, Hey America! It’s Christmastime!

Matt Austin

Bottomless Pit, Hammer of the Gods

Imagine if instead of Punk Rock, classic rockers decided to strip prog rock down a bit.

Ricardo Villalobos, Easy Lee / Dexter

Arguably the decadent techno godfather's zenith, these two tracks were recently reissued and prove his mastery of chopped vocals and constantly shifting beats.

The The, Dusk

I remember my uncle having this CD growing up, and when someone mentioned it on Twitter, it seemed like a good time to revisit it. Solid stuff.

Dexy's Midnight Runners, Too-Rye-Ay

Beyond "Come on Eileen", this mashup of punk energy and folk music remains catchy to this day.

The Convocation Of…, Pyramid Technology

Imagine a bass player tackling the guitar like his main instrument. Single lines, no chords, and each part of the power trio on equal footing. A lost rock masterpiece. 

Jeff Boyle

Earlier releases I played regularly:

Otto Totland, Pinô

MimiCof, KotoLyra

MimiCo, RundSkipper

Jan Jalinek, Loop Finding Jazz Records

Dead Rat Orchestra, Pearl Fisher / Boat Notchers

 Some thoughts about my year with music:

I don’t often listen to pop music, but a new record from Beauty Pill is always going to be of interest to me. The second track, “Afrikaner Barista” is easily the song I heard the most this year, as the cd lived in my car and it was a favorite of both my kids. If it had been any less than excellent I would have begun refusing the requests. As it is, it is nigh on seven minutes of exquisite art pop and was stoked as hell that my children had the good sense and taste to latch onto that song.

The Watkins Family Hour Tiny Desk Concert is a video that my two year old daughter would watch multiple times every day. It’s grown on me considerably.

Go here: look around. Check out some of the artists. It’s informative and eye-opening and awesome. It’s worth your time.

I’ve been drifting away from sound art/experimental works for a couple of years and it’s been awesome to spend a little time actually scraping up against those sounds again.

If you can afford it, subscribe to WIRE.

Brian Flota

Jimmie Dale & The Flatlanders, All American Music (1972)

Originally released on 8-Track in 1972, this has become a quintessential proto-alt-country album. The Flatlanders boast a great lineup, including Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joy Ely, and Butch Hancock.

Norman Connors, Dance of Magic (1972)

Great early 1970s jazz fusion album consisting of essential Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi group. Not really experimental, but each track has drive.

The JBs, These Are the JBs (2014)

Recorded in1970, this RSD Black Friday 2014 release is the JBs album that James Brown cancelled at the last minute featuring the Bootsy Collins version of the lineup. It includes one of the greatest, and most sampled, songs of all-time, "The Grunt."

KARP, Self Titled LP (1997)

Awesome scuz-rock from an unlikely source, the usually twee K Records. Sort of sounds like the Melvins on uppers.

Blue Effect & Jazz Q Praha, Coniunctio (1970)

What happens when free jazz, rock, and jazz fusion are mixed together? This Czech album provides the answer.

Stonewall, Stonewall (1976)

A tax scam record of unknown origin, the band credited as Stonewall kick out the jams on this brief but impactful record, chockfull of hard rock gems.

Dedalus, Dedalus (1974)

Italian jazz fusion record with just a hint of musique concrete.

Ann Peebles, I Can't Stand the Rain (1974)

Produced by Willie Mitchell, Al Green's producer, I Can't Stand the Rain bares some resemblance to an Al Green record. But the title track transcends any comparison between the two. Solid soul record.

Sam Gopal, Escalator (1969)

Interesting psychedelic record that is noteworthy for featuring a young Lemmy Kilmister on vocal and electric guitar duties.

Kathy Heideman, Move with Love (1971)

Solid private press country album from the early 1970s that owes some debt to The Band.

Garrett Karrberg

Bedhead, 1992-1998

I didn’t know Bedhead when they existed and I slept on last year’s box set from Numero Records.  Well, I got with the program this year.  Every note coming from the three intertwining guitars, bass, and drums is perfect and hits at just the right moment.  The music is some of the most beautiful and powerful I’ve ever heard and the packaging and writing from Numero is fantastic as usual.

Annalibera

I recently discovered a bunch of music this band put out in 2015, from the poppy and dreamy Nevermind I Love You to the more ambient and experimental loveil.   I saw Anna Gebhardt, Annalibera’s principal songwriter, play a solo show in Minneapolis that paired loveil in its entirety with a coordinating video projection and she just blew me away.

Sheer Mag

Only two EPs so far, but both are SO GOOD.  Just listen to “Fan the Flames” and you’ll understand.

Shopping

I only discovered Shopping when I saw them open for Shannon and the Clams at the end of October, so it was too late for their 2015 record Why Choose to crack my top ten of the year.  Danceable post-punk in the vein of ESG or Gang of Four and a blast to see live.

Elyse Weinberg, Greasepaint Smile

Sometimes folky, sometimes bluesy, sometimes a little funky.  This 1969 album has some great-sounding bass and drums and Neil Young playing guitar on the song “Houses.”

Spent a lot of time with this year because of reissues and box sets (not all released this year): Unwound, Ork Records, Ugly Casanova, Charles Mingus, Thin Lizzy, Red Red Meat, Sonic Youth’s EVOL, 1965-66 Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Stone Roses, Roky Erickson.

Great stuff not on full-length albums: the above-mentioned Sheer Mag’s 7” II, Purling Hiss’ Meandering Noodle cassette, Ukiah Drag’s Crypt Cruiser EP, Lvl Up’s Three Songs, Vexx’s Give and Take 7”, two Rat Columns EPs, and almost every cassette on Night-People Records.

Brian McBrearty

I was fortunate enough to catch the Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well concerts in Chicago over 4th of July weekend.  Lee Ranaldo was there too.  We are best friends now (not really). Anyway, since then I have been on an intense Dead listening binge.  The Dead rabbit hole is seemingly endless, but I thought I would share what I have learned so far.

May 8, 1977, Barton Hall at Cornell University. The Dead’s spring ’77 tour is regarded as one of the band’s best and this show may be the height of that tour. This show has not seen an official release because the tapes were sold in a storage space auction when one of the Dead’s longtime recordists, Betty Cantor-Jackson, fell on hard financial times. Do yourself a favor and take 15 minutes out of your day to listen to the version of “Morning Dew” from this show. Without hyperbole, it may be the most rocking performance I have ever heard in my entire life.  

So Glad You Made It: Spring 1990.  The spring of 1990 saw another highly-regarded tour by the Grateful Dead.  Perhaps the band’s final consistently good tour. This album, an official release, is a compilation of 18 tracks from various shows throughout that tour and is a must listen in my opinion. “Blow Away” and “Loser” are highlights.

Brent Mydland. Brent. Fucking. Mydland. The Dead’s longest-tenured keyboard player has brought so much joy to my life in the past six months. An amazing singer and songwriter as well as a top-notch improviser. This dude ruled so hard. He died on July 26, 1990 at the age of 37. Ugh.

The Wall of Sound. The Dead were also technological innovators. If you cannot get behind this article giving a detailed history of the Wall of Sound, there is nothing I can do for your wayward soul.

Dead Ballads. The Dead are often noted for their improvisation/jamming skills, but they were great songwriters as well. I have been particularly fond of the band’s ballads lately. I fell hard for this acoustic version of “To Lay Me Down” from the Reckoning album the minute I heard it.

Finally, I am just beginning to appreciate the breadth of the Dead’s songbook and its place in the American musical continuum. For insight into the band’s roots and influences, this article is a great starting point: http://www.folkways.si.edu/roots-of-the-grateful-dead/music/playlist/smithsonian.

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This phenomenon can also be experienced when staring at a large field of the same color, like a seamless white ceiling. The brain starts seeing patterns where there are none, and in my own experience, colors begin to appear to bleed out of the surface as the brain attempts to make sense of the lack of detail. For the latest cinchel tape, Worry, I recreated the Ganzfield experiment, but using the record’s two-track drone instead of radio static.

Jason Shanley (aka cinchel) refers to this forty-five minute voyage as an exploration of “worry and how it’s the black hole of our personal existence,” and like black holes swallowing stars out in the vacuum of space, these two twenty-plus minute tracks are staring at you just as much as you’re staring into their void.

 Created with a guitar, chord organ, and Fender Rhodes organ, cinchel lays a foundation of soft, wide-screen tones that never congeal into a concrete, identifiable timbre. Side one, “Her ladder was rung with the love of her friends”, is a bit lighter, while side two ends with “A light crack in the wall”, a darker journey. It may just be because side one is based on a static major chord, but the sounds that bubble up, like insect chirps and a squeaky metal fence door, almost sound pastoral. Worry casts a shadow over even the most pastoral scene, as the drone bulldozes the naturalistic sounds beneath the wheels of uncertainty.

 In 2013, Baltimore duo Matmos released The Marriage of True Minds, the foundation of which was an attempt to telepathically communicate their intentions for the record with subjects, (who were under the Ganzfield effect) who then would describe what they saw. The subjects’ reactions were both sampled and used as compositional signposts in the resulting album.

 cinchel’s Worry is quite a different take on the Ganzfield effect. Being a drone record of uniform, albeit slowly changing, textures, I thought it would be interesting to see what my brain would think of Worry in an otherwise sensory-deprived environment. Here’s what I “saw”:

Swelling waves of color like the opening of Fantasia. The background was a throbbing red, with purple and orange waves rising and falling.

A slowly closing/opening darkness, like a camera shutter, or the vertically moving line that appears when a camera is pointed at a TV with a different scanning frequency.

Light explosions in the corner of my eyes, shaped like a sloppily drawn five-pointed star, with a smaller star inside.

A black spot slowly receding like a black hole collapsing on itself. I recall this and the following effect from childhood.

A lighter spot getting bigger and enveloping my vision

Vague solid-colored organic shapes, coming into focus as a face, then the solid color peeling away to reveal squiggly lines, like the skin had been peeled off.

 Clearly the last one was a bit disturbing, but it wasn’t a photorealistic image, just hazy shapes in my field of vision. My method of recreating the Ganzfeld experiment wasn’t perfect (I didn’t have any ping pong balls to put over my eyes), and I fell asleep after the album finished, but I found it to be a great excuse to just sit with some music with no other distractions.

While it’s mostly pointless to discuss a drone record in terms of songwriting or technique, Worry succeeds in creating an atmosphere both thick and amorphous, letting in light and completely enveloping at the same time.  It reminds me of bits of Stars of the Lid (occasionally recognizable musical notes, general adherence to Western scales) and harsh noise like VOMIR (thick slabs of static that in this case are filed down to be a bit less caustic). This tape rewards both passive and active listening, revealing its secrets in measured doses.

Postscript: While the Ganzfeld Effect has been used in an attempt to prove the ESP susceptibility of subjects, seeing light where there is none is a very real phenomenon, referred to as Closed Eye Visualizations. After turning the light off to go to bed, you’ve most likely seen a kind of pointillist static of blacks and dark purples; this is Visual Noise, the first level of CEV perception.

Seeing light where there is none, like the splashes of color seen while trying to concentrate on Visual Noise, is phosphenes, and while you are trying to get to sleep, these are most likely caused by a random firing of the visual cortex. Once you introduce the uniform static of white noise, the brain adds this to the neural noise that randomly fires in the brain, since it has no visual or auditory stimuli to process.

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 Matthew Austin is a graphic designer and writer. He lives with his wife in the Washington, DC area.

In the days before the internet made hearing new music almost foolishly simple, I only had message board name-drops, zines, and friends’ suggestions when it came to finding new music. Sure, there was MTV’s 120 Minutes, which was in its waning days as a portal to “underground” and “cool” music (that had the budget for videos and PR), and that would occasionally unearth a gem or two. However, this was during the late 90’s heyday of the Compact Disc, when a $2 piece of aluminum could be sold for a king’s ransom with no knowledge of its content beyond the Single, which was usually also The Only Good Song on the Album. I made plenty of bad purchases in those days, my personal nadir being the first Muse album, whose first single (the “Creep”-aping “Muscle Museum”) was also the only track that didn’t sound like a bad cover of “The Tourist”. This was also back in the days of used CD stores, so I could at least get a few bucks back to spend on a used Black Flag CD.

 While the bummer of buying a shitty CD was rough, it had nothing on the high of actually getting one that was All Killer No Filler, finding a legendary album heard of only in passing or dropped into music reviews as cultural touchstones everyone should know (but that I didn’t). I recall getting home with a copy of Guided by Voices’s Under the Bushes Under the Stars, or Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album, and marveling at how it was possible to fill an entire disc with music I would listen to more than once.

 Fast forward a few years, and after a week of having a T1 line in college, I had downloaded those unassailable Music Snob classics like Tago Mago and Lazer Guided Melodies (along with the pop-punk classic New Found Glory; I didn’t say I wasn’t dumb). The mystery of hearing about some legendary album for years before finally tracking it down was gone. And now, now that we’ve moved firmly into the future, digital distribution has eclipsed physical sales, so that any desire can be fulfilled immediately.

 The latest music industry gimmick to boost sales and excitement—and it is a gimmick, like any other model used to sell units—is the Surprise Album Release, in which a high profile artist drops a new collection without the usual months-long promotional push, interviews, videos, etc. This may be the closest contemporary listeners can get to the rollercoaster ride of joy and regret that used to come with buying an album without hearing it first. To be realistic, this method is really about money. It exists to combat leaks, to get on the top of the internet news cycle, but it really does blow the load all at once, metaphorically speaking. No longer do you have to scour record stores for Warehouse: Songs and Stories before finally ordering it via the surly guy behind the counter, or come across Spiderland in a cut-out bin at some college record store.

 Since, like it or not, the music industry measures success by the number of likes a post gets, the retweets and trending topics, and the seemingly inflexible First Week Sales measurement, here’s a rundown of Surprise Release Albums from the last couple years and how they fared in our cold, unfeeling capitalist world where is the most important criteria is monetary success.

 Thom Yorke, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes

Released: September 26, 2014

Method: BitTorrent Bundle& limited physical vinyl release

 Radiohead aren’t new to the alternate distribution method game, having made headlines with the surprise 2007 release of In Rainbows as a pay-what-you want album (at least for the digital version). Borne out of Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich’s disdain for the pricing model of streaming services like Spotify, they released it as a BitTorrent bundle, which for $6 gets you a torrent of the album as MP3s, along with cover art and a music video. It’s the first time BitTorrent has charged for access to a torrent, which allows users to download the .zip file in small bits (called seeds) spread across many users.

  Result: $1-20 million, depending on who you ask. BitTorrent tracks how many people are legitimately downloading the album, but like any data about Internet use, should be taken with a giant grain of salt. Paying for a BitTorrent Bundle is a dicey proposition, since the technology is based on people all over the world keeping a torrent program open on their computer for others to leech from. Thom Yorke’s deal probably guaranteed a number of computers dedicated solely to seeding the album, and in the long run has a much cheaper startup and upkeep than hosting the file himself on a dedicated server, unless everyone forgets about the album and deletes the torrent. As a small-scale experiment for a small-scale album, it’s a success.

 Björk, Vulnicura

Released: January 20, 2015

Method: Surprise digital release followed by standard physical release

 Originally scheduled to be released in March 2015 to coincide with a book and art exhibit, a premature leak of the album prompted record label One Little Indian to quickly release the album via digital outlets, but not without some problems. The whole drama can be read about here, though suffice it to say, companies like Amazon and Apple are not accustomed to such quick pivots.

  Result: Top 20 on several Billboard charts, selling 23,000 copies and garnering even more publicity for a harrowing album of romantic breakup. It’s impossible to judge this as a publicity technique, since it wasn’t, but it’s a great example of living in an age when an artist can respond to the threat of leaking immediately. In comparison, a bootleg of an early live performance of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon shifted nearly 100,000 copies a year before the proper album was released.

 Beyoncé, Beyoncé

Released: December 13, 2013

Method: Surprise digital release

 Somehow the most famous singer in America managed to secretly record an album with big name producers and make music videos for every single track with the public unaware until the whole thing was dropped into iTunes with zero publicity. The release kind of acts like an acknowledgement of her diehard fans, flattering them with the assumption that they will drop the money on her music without the mandatory months-long promotional lead up.

  Result: The fastest selling album in iTunes history, nearly going platinum in three days, but really did you expect anything less?

 Drake, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late

Released: February 13, 2015

Method: Surprise digital release

 I’m not really here to talk about Drake’s recent surprise “album” (living in the tail end of the Mixtape Era kind of muddies the water), but three tracks he released back in October 2013—“Heat of the Moment”, “6 God”, and “How Bout Now”. Responding to the threat of a leak, Drake posted the songs on his SoundCloud page to circumvent hackers, which doubled as a pretty standard, if unplanned, rap album promotional ploy. It’s nothing new for labels to release non-album singles to gauge the audience’s desire for a full length.

 The thing is, the kids always want more Drake, so radio stations started playing rips of the three new songs to satiate the hunger, giving songs with no official release a chance at a place on radio charts. Word was that they were outtakes from his upcoming album, called Views from the 6, but increasing acrimony with his record label may have forced the release of If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late to fulfill contractual obligations. It’s worth noting that Views from the 6’ official promo single “0 to 100/The Catch Up” was also nominated for a Grammy along with going platinum.

  Result: The SoundCloud songs kept his name in the papers, but it’s not like he needed it. 2011’s Take Care and 2013’s Nothing was the Same still hold healthy slots on the Billboard charts, and his singles dominate radio. However, this is a good indicator that maybe the hip hop album is dead (it’s been dying for a while), and major artists will soon focus solely on singles without feeling like the statement of a full length album is necessary. J. Cole’s surprise album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, was dropped around the same time with a ton of hype of him as the Next Big Thing, making one of those Big Album Statements, but it so far has sold a few thousand than the odds ‘n’ sods Drake mixtape.

 Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2

Released: October 24, 2014

Method: Free MP3s and various purchased bundles

 What’s the point of pressing records if everyone’s just going to download them? Killer Mike and El-P proved you can satisfy the curious fans and cash in on the diehards with their last solo albums and the first Run the Jewels album. In a move that parallels the album’s fun vibe, Run the Jewels simply offered up a free ZIP file in return for an email address. The bundles, which ranged from a physical CD or vinyl, stickers, posters, t-shirts, smoke sessions, and the now all-too-real cat sounds-based Meow the Jewels remix, showed the duo could offer something to the fans eager to give them their money. Kind of like drinking with your parents, the RtJ just said ‘you’re gonna go pirate our album anyways, at least just get it from us.’ It may have been interpreted as a sign of respect to the kids downloading leaked albums all the time, and instead of trying to control access, simply rerouting the access.

  Result: Run the Jewels’s first album laid the groundwork for what has become a global takeover with their second: concert tours to all parts of the globe, high profile late-night performances, and if their Twitter feeds are any indication, barely a moment’s rest. With the popularity came ever-lucrative synchronization rights, which is the only way musicians make the serious money nowadays anyways. Naturally, a third album is currently being recorded.

 U2, Songs of Innocence

Released: September 9, 2014

Method: Free MP3s and various purchased bundles

 U2 used to be the biggest band in America. The Joshua Tree to Zooropa run is pretty much peerless, even though they cashed in their chips for the unfairly maligned Pop. They are, as a whole, extremely rich, the kind of rich where when they moved their music publishing to the Netherlands to avoid Irish taxes, Irish MPs brought it up in Parliament. When people are so rich they are essentially their own hedge fund, their perspective on the world gets a tad skewed. When you’re the Biggest Band in the World and you partner with the hippest computer company in the world, you probably assume the world is waiting for your new music with bated breath.

 Result: Disaster! Turns out people only like free albums when they have the choice to get them. iTunes users who woke up to Songs of Innocence suddenly appearing on their computers cried foul, citing privacy laws and the hubris that everyone would want it. Like any good businessman, Bono reminded the world that Apple was responsible for any negative fallout from the release, and the computer giant was forced to set up a system for users to remove the album. History may find parallels between this debacle and the term “shipped gold/returned platinum,” which originated with a failed KISS album.

 So, in sum, what do all of these acts have in common? THEY’RE ALREADY REALLY FAMOUS. There are thousands of free or pay-what-you-want releases on Bandcamp alone, but those never make the front page of any publication. Releasing an album without fanfare is precisely what 99% of the people making music do, whether it was a conscious decision or not. Hopefully the spread of high profile surprise releases will help to level the playing field a bit, but really it’s probably just going to become another arrow in the quiver of PR companies and already powerful record labels.

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 Matthew Austin is a graphic designer and writer who lives with his wife just outside of Washington, DC.

1996’s Diatribes, the first Napalm Death record I ever owned, could be seen as both a good and bad place to start with the band. On one hand, it’s by far the catchiest, most accessible record in their discography, a conscious attempt to broaden their sound with slower tempos, traditional song structures, and something approaching memorable hooks. On the other hand, it’s miles away from their first couple of records, which were comprised of pounded-out speedball bursts of sound that were rarely longer than a minute (including the 3-second “You Suffer”). Part of that is due to the Diatribes lineup, containing exactly zero members who performed in Napalm Death’s early '80s incarnation, but it is also the result of musicians trying to find new ways to express themselves in the confining corner of punk & metal they had painted themselves. 

 Most people will only hear a distorted blur for most of the running time of Apex Predator – Easy Meat, but there are are a few places where the band squeezes their on-a-dime riffing into something resembling a song, and one of them is the best track on the record. “Hierarchies” has a clear riff, their usual brutal attack, and a chorus that’s not only catchy, but has a discernible melody. Vocalist Barney Greenway has an arsenal of screeches and barks at his disposal, but he utilizes the chanting style of the opening track to bellow the chorus “We pushed it all too far / Those vicious cycles, ecocide / We spilled the blood of innocents / Hierarchies.” Apex Predator won’t make the radio, but it’s another example of the band mixing it up and sounding a lot younger than their years. 

 Napalm Death began near Coventry, UK, in 1981, as the punk explosion splintered into the melodic style that eventually became New Wave, and the harsher direction that led to crust punk and hardcore. Napalm Death were firmly in the latter camp, speeding up the doom laden punk of Amebix and Antisect while retaining their anarchist/political lyrical bent. The lineup turnover was laughable, with their first record, Scum, only having one member in common on sides A and B of the original vinyl release. The band included eventually prominent musicians like Justin Broadrick (Jesu, Godflesh) and Bill Steer (Carcass), though they returned to their own projects early in the band’s life. Across all of the lineups in those early days, they all had in common buzzsaw riffs and tracks that were more like a sprint to the finish than an actual song.

 The songs on Diatribes, meanwhile, were fairly predictable, with verses and choruses and middle eights and little of the unpredictable chaos that defines grindcore. It's odd that even now I think of them as a grindcore band that branched out into death metal, when that phase of their history was essentially over after 1988's From Enslavement to Obliteration. After that, the lineup started to solidify, and 1990's Harmony Corruption had longer songs, absorbing bits of death metal and thrash, giving their usually busy riffs some breathing room.

The cloistered factions of extreme music tend to take exception to bands that move outside the strictly drawn lines of each genre. In the 80s, when punk bands like Agnostic Front started using the palm-muted riff style and precise tempos of thrash metal, it was dubbed "crossover" and split their fanbase into those who thought it was disrespectful to their punk roots and those who embraced the speed and technical skill their new records began to showcase. 

 Napalm Death had kind of the opposite problem: by switching to a more death metal-influenced style, they alienated the fans who had enjoyed the blurred aggression of their first two records, where the sound was an endurance test, a way for fans to see who else was into this difficult music. To be fair, there's a place for this style, and my exercise playlist almost solely consists of the kind of punk, metal, and grindcore that most people would have trouble telling one song from the other. 

Their growth as a band hasn’t been without some missteps, with bits of other metal styles not being easily integrated into their usual sound. The problem was that they really only focused on one style per song, instead of absorbing the influence to make a new whole. Diatribes was the peak of their attempts at straightforward songwriting, with subsequent records shedding the verse/chorus/verse structure with varying degrees of success.

 I fell off listening to the band after that, dipping my toes in occasionally to see what they were up to in the intervening years. They continued to experiment, incorporating slower tempos and staccato riffs that sounded more like a band struggling for direction than confidently navigating new endeavors. Label troubles didn’t help, as a contentious split with original label Earache led them jump ship for Spitfire Records, home to hair metal also-rans like Enuff Z Nuff, Sebastian Bach, and Zakk Wylde. They signed with Century Media for 2005’s The Code Is Red ... Long Live the Code, and finally seem comfortable on a label that has slowly become the home for still-vital veteran metal bands.

 That confidence of their classic era has returned for Apex Predator – Easy Meat, with the band throwing in a tumbling mix of riffs in each song, constantly taking quick turns while coming up for air with a straightforward melody to balance out the chaos. Napalm Death have been in the game for more than 30 years, and to hear them come out of the wilderness even stronger than before is heartening to say the least.

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