Kingcrimsonprog
Napalm Death have been playing incredibly loud and angry music since 1981, evolving from a essentially very noisy hardcore punk band, to influencing a thousand grindcore acts with their first few albums, then evolving into essentially a death metal band and later going off on an experimental tangent for a few albums until finally hitting their stride again and settling into a sound that has served them well for an entire decade. Over their career they have been true pioneers and released some incredibly memorable and influential songs and albums.
2009′s Time Waits For No Slave, the band’s thirteenth studio album overall, is the fifth album to feature their new modern style which they initially introduced with 2000′s Enemy Of The Music Business (arguably the band’s best ever album.) All the albums which followed have had a similar sound as a rule; The mixture of blasting, hardcore influences, death metal influences, groove metal influences and a modern twist, along with the one or two obligatory slow tracks are all still present on Time Waits For No Slave which delivers more quality metal as you have came to expect from Napalm Death.
This isn’t an album of strong highlights and then weaker tracks, the whole album is pretty much consistent in every way from beginning to end, stylistically as well in quality. The only exceptions really being the slow songs, as on their previous two records, although which is something that harks back to their debut album Scum.
In truth, for some listeners the formula may be wearing a little thin now, after five albums of increasing perfection but therefor diminishing character, another 14-16 tracks of similar material isn’t going to make your jaw drop and proclaim this the bet release ever.
This is the only flaw with the album however, and if you haven’t heard all of the band’s five most recent albums then it won’t even be a flaw at all. This is top notch, utterly professional, heavy and fast extreme-metal from one of the entire metal genre’s finest bands.
Napalm Death fans should all consider picking up a copy of Time Waits For No Slave; unless of course you thought that Smear Campaign was too similar to The Code’ and so on. Otherwise this is a fine and virtually perfect set of Napalm Death songs and will give you more of what you want.