Customer Reviews

Noise for Music's Sake

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A long time in the making, Napalm Death's greatest hits package `Noise for Music's Sake' does not disappoint by any stretch of the imagination. Containing some of their best work and rare and unreleased goodies including live tracks, covers, and pre `Scum' demos, it gives you enough music to pacify even the most rabid grind / death fan's aggression. As a fan of Napalm Death throughout all of their phases, and I mean I love all of their records, I can safely say that there could not be a better collection of their brutal sonic genius. The compilation includes tracks with both Barney Greenway in vocals as well as original screamer Lee Dorrian giving the record a both death and punk / grind flavor that personifies the Napalm Death entity as a whole. My personal favorites are "Chains that Bind Us", the demo of "I Abstain", the live cover of "Avalanche Master Song", and the original mix of "Twist the Knife (Slowly)", but on a record like this you can pick and choose for yourself. I can only find one problem with the album and that is that "Dogma" is on here, and that is just because it is one of my personal favorite Napalm Death songs, but hey, you can't win them all. Even though Napalm Death are always mistaken as the fathers of grindcore, either Deep Wound or Siege are the true holders of that title, they still know how to play a great tune even after years as a band. This truly highlights one of the best and most influential bands of all time throughout their career. For newcomers to Napalm Death, this is a great place to get acquainted with their grinding sound and for fans there are plenty of unreleased tracks. `Noise for Music's Sake' is definitely a greatest hits compilation that contains truly the best of the best.

I usually avoid compilations but Napalm Death's Noise for Music's Sake is the exception to the rule. Spanning two cd's of Napalm Death's long and illustrious career, Noise for Music Sake is a balanced attack of old mixed with new. The Lee Dorian voiced tracks such as If the truth be known, Unchallenged Hate and FETO stand tall alongside newer Greenway classics like Hung, Plague Rages, Diatribes and the World Keeps Turning. The mix of the new and old tracks really gives the listener a good idea of how long these innovators have been turning out flawless metal. Disc one plays as a "greatest hits" and disc two is unreleased material, demos and "B" sides. I purchased this double cd strictly for the second disc but soon found myself drawn to the first eventhough I own all of the individual albums. The family tree liner insert is really comprehensive. Shane took great time and effort to outline all of the side projects and band formations. Overall, most ND fans will already own 99% of the material on Noise for Music's Sake but it's worth buying for the second disc of rarities alone. Recommended.

Napalm Death aren't a band they are already a living legend and finally "Noise For Music's Sake" is their document and the definitive Napalm Death collection. The inventors of grindcore who confuse the extreme music scene for more than 20 years! The first CD features all of Napalm Death's classics like songs from their early records "Scum" and "Suffer The Children" and of course also the best songs of the later albums "Diatribes" and "Breed To Breathe". As I said this CD features only some tracks of the albums so it's definitely no discography, if Earache wanted to do so this must be a 10 CD set! It would be just to much to name all the tracks but beside the classics like "Scum", "You Suffer" or "Deceiver" of the Scum-LP, "Hung" from "Fear, Emptiness, Despair" and "Antibody" from the "Greed Killing" album they also offer "The Chains That Bind Us" from "Harmony Corruption" or "Breed to Breathe" from "Inside The Torn Apart"! They picked the best songs of all their albums and at the end of the first CD they also added the Dead Kennedys cover "Nazi Punks Fuck Off"! The second CD features rare and unreleased tracks beginning with the four songs of the "Mentally Murdered" EP and "Pride Assassin" of the "Mass Appeal Madness". It follows the live cover of Godflesh's "Avalanche Master Song" and the bonus-tracks of the additionally 3" CD of the "Utopia Banished" album. After that two songs of the "World Keeps Turning" EP and the bonus tracks of "Fear, Emptiness, Despair" made it on the compilation. Now we come to the demo-version "Upwards and Uninterested" that was also on the Split with Coalesce and the demo-version of "I Abstain". Next one are "Politics of Common Sense" of the At The Gates Split and four compilation tracks. Least but not last we get five unreleased tracks, the Pete Coleman mix of "Remain Nameless" & "Twist the Knife". "Deceiver" live in Wacken '87 with Mitch Dickinson of Unseen Terror on guitar, "The Traitor" live in Birmingham '86 and "Abattoir" also live in Birmingham '86! That's it...almost 2 1/2 hours of Napalm Death destruction and this should be a part of every CD-collection!!

Always evolving and never lacking in integrity, this 2CD set serves to remind us that ND's music is often underrated in the metal and hardcore worlds and is actually the base from which so many bands have spawned.
No matter what stage of their career they've been at and no matter how many idiots have cried "Sell out" they are still here and still writing riffs which most others can't. They remind me of all those great old bands who used to come up with classic riff after classic riff (Possessed, Death, Repulsion, Master) without even trying. Some of the newer bands would do well to even write a riff like ND use in some of the songs they actually never released until now.I'd love to see Dying Fetus write ANYTHING touching ND at any stage in therir career.
The other cool thing here is that the mix of material actually helps show just how they've evolved yet at the same time the rock solid foundation upon which their music is built.
In a word, AWESOME!

Napalm Death is one of the first metal bands that I ever really got into back around 1990, and I've never tired of their brutal grind/thrash still to this day. These guys have been considered legends for many years now, and rightly so. I agree with the previous reviewer, these guys have never sold out, and have continued to do things their way since their early days back in the early/mid 80's, which is definitely respectable of any artists, especially this day in time, where so many lame bands these days are only after fortune and fame(and seem to be attaining it due to media hype and lack of better taste in music from today's youth, but this is purely my opinion). Probably the main reason N.D. has remained one of my favorite bands is because of their messages in the lyrics, talking about a wide variety of societal problems and trying to raise public awareness about a lot of flaws of gov't., war, big business/corporations, media manipulation, etc. and I just feel all of these messages are important and give people things to think about(not that it will change most peoples' love of McDonalds culture and the like). Anyway, I love virtually all of the material on these 2 discs, and disc 1 is a "best of" and disc 2 has the "mentally murdered" ep (some of my most loved ND tracks), and some other studio rarities and early live stuff from '86-'87, so I recommend this to both long time Napalm fans and new fans of the band. Also, the booklet includes a Napalm Death family tree outling all the different bands that members of Napalm have been involved with, and also liner notes by Shane Embury(bass player for the group since "from enslavement...")These guys have really earned their keep and continue to be an uncompromising force in the metal genre, and I hope they continue to address political and societal issues that need to be addressed, since most metal bands don't have anything significant to say with silly talk of satanism and what not. OK, thanks for reading this if you've got this far. Take care!

I could write an entire book as to why I love and cherish this band,but I will keep it brief on this review.From the beginning,these fathers of grincore have set a high standard for death metal and grindcore,while never selling out.This compilation is very well put together because it chronicles all their classics from scum to their new album order of the leech.The second side has live recordings and rare studio recordings which are all good.The cd has a map outlining all the different group lineup changes and has a very insightful history of the band in the liner notes.Awesome artwork,intelligent lyrics and outstanding musicianship is what you get here.In their 23 year history this band has never sold out or become numetal like metallica has done.These guys work hard at what they do and it shows in their music,so lets support a band thats all about the music and not just image.To conclude,you will get more than your moneys worth on this purchase and thats rare with todays commercial garbage.GO OUT AND BUY THIS TODAY!!!

It took a few weeks for me to really be able to take in all that this compilation offers (56 tracks = lots of listening), but this was one of the first releases from Napalm Death I have aquired.

Its a great place to start for anyone new to the band (I have since purchased most of their other albums).

The compilation as a whole is excellent, but I really like Disc 2. Highlights are Truth Drug, Pride Assassin, and Food Chains.

Disc 1 is kind of a greatest hits compilation of their 20 year career. Don't just get this album, there are many, many hidden gems on their studio albums that should not be missed. In other words, 'Noise For Music's Sake' is just the tip of the ice berg, but an ample selection of tracks and an excellent place to start.

5 stars for my favorite band.

Barney forever \M/

Metallic metal. I mean the Goths have arrived and landed, the Vikings have just set foot on land and are marching up to Canterbury or some other city that can be looted and pillaged and burnt down to the ground and in which there are some important bishop or nobles that can be captured and then ransomed before burning the city and beheading the hostage anyway. A hostage is like bait to catch fish, honey to catch flies. What does this metal, extreme metal mean? It brings some strange work on sound with some noise here and there that is used to give some density to the already heavy structure and texture. Don't look for any harmony in the standard meaning. Just repetitive elements that beat our eardrums to some kind of rupture point and yet they don't break so that we slide into this sound, into this rhythmic harmony and we abandon ourselves to these nannies of the napalm age. And that is the very question we have to answer if we can; Where does this music come from. It comes from a world in which noise is becoming the only material element that still has some existence and that overwhelm and drown everything else. And the most extreme noise in our world is the noise of war. War id our world and we have to live in it, and if you do not have the chance of living next to the front, this music is going to provide you with a fair imitation. But then what about the voice, at times voices? They just complete the fall into that pit of cannibalistic war noise; they are the voices of human-man hell, of man-fabricated apocalypse, of the homo sapiens gone crazy by listening onlu to his death instinct, not even survival instinct since war is the best way to die and there is no guarantee you will survive once this machine has been set on its path of blood and sweat. So the voices try to explain in sounds that are shouts and yells but not words that the world is falling down into some kind of abyss that is not even dark or black. It is the color of fire, red like blood, scarlet like rape, vermilion like torture, and so many other shades of red. Don't expect you will survive, because you are bound to die, to just dive and drop into it. Good riddance in a way since we don't need any of you, weak hearted and pale skinned natives of the western wealthy ditch of mud and blood. The only meaning is in the titles of these pieces and I find them aggravatingly dense: Mass Appeal Madness, From Enslavement To Obliteration, etc. That is Social Sterility at its utmost and perfect embodiment. The second CD is quite identical to the first one, though we discover they can speak in an articulated languages in the live session to introduce their silence-breaking music, their exploration n beyond the sound barrier of deafness because we are deaf to this everyday brutality of the world on our ears, all the more deaf to it that most of us now wear, like some piece of clothing they don't even take off to have a shower, some music player that covers the outside noise, at times with a noise that is even more important. That's a music that wants to make us think about the presence of death all around us. Biut as I said before, after a while it becomes comfortable to let us go down into its lush texture and we are no longer aware of any outside world. Does this music defeats itself? Probably, but we could discuss it for a long time.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Hell ya Napalm Death and there greatest songs from almost all there albums how could it get any better then this.With brutal gutair riffs and haunting vocals this cd couldn't get any better this cd is worth every penny don't get all the albums just get this because almost every song on every album is on here.

This band is just special and there is nothing like them. CD 2 is friggin killer, period, don't take no crap from anyone telling you different. This CD kicks all kindza ace. You gotta have it. I hate greatest hits or best of junk but this CD is genius.

Killer tracks: Seize the Power, Suffer the Children, Scum, Unchallenged Hate, Armaggeden X 7, Pride Assassin and many, many more.