NAPALM DEATH — Order of the Leech (review)

NAPALM DEATH — Order of the Leech album cover Album · 2002 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Kingcrimsonprog
Napalm Death’s tenth full length studio album Order Of The Leech, from 2002, is certainly a strong album and a great example of Napalm Death’s post millennial sound.

Napalm Death have always been are a funny lot stylistically, they are difficult to pigeon hole and have evolved constantly throughout their career. For example; their first three albums were a very noisy hardcore influenced affair which helped spawned the grindcore genre. The albums were very poorly recorded (some fans say this was done on purpose however) and featured pretty much non-stop blast beats. They then recorded three excellent albums of almost conventional, straight-forward death metal with less grind in the overall sound. Four more melodic, experimental and listenable albums followed which some listeners and reviewers would inevitably call ‘sellout.’

Around the turn of the century, the band released the trio of their three best ever albums; Enemy Of The Music Business, The Code Is Red’ and of course this album, Order Of The Leech. The sound was a brand new, revolutionary strain of metal that mixed together elements of traditional Death Metal, their so called ‘sellout’ style, and their original blast centric, raw ferocity.

This combination of their different styles resulted in a fantastic set of songs; full of intense drumming, distorted bass and Barney’s harsh as death metal but intelligible vocal style as well as his usual brilliant lyrics. In terms of guitar style there are mixture of balls out thrash metal riffs, hardcore sounding riffs, grooves and of course insane hyper speed grinding.

Highlights include ‘Continuing The War On Stupidity’ ‘Blows To The Body’ and ‘Per Capita.’

The realm only complaint that I have with this particular record is that while blast beats are used to great effect often, they are overused and sometimes can become tedious and spoil the otherwise strong music. However in summary; Although the weakest of thee three aforementioned Napalm Death albums, I still recomend that people give Order Of The Leech a try, especially in combination with their career highlight Enemy Of The Music Business or The Code Is Red… Long Live The Code.
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