Influential
thrash metal band from
Birmingham,
England who played a key role in creating the
grindcore subgenre. Napalm Death was founded in 1982, but they are best known for their work in the late
80s and early
90s.
Napalm Death's early recordings--Scum (1987), their 1987 Peel Sessions recordings, and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988)--put the genre through a blender and came close to defining how fast, chaotic, and short a metal tune can possibly be. The band's incomprehensible bass-growl vocals, their speed, and their horror-goth stylings helped define what grindcore is. Additionally, these early recordings were crucial influences on noted NYC avant-garde saxophonist/composer John Zorn.
Later recordings tended to feature longer, slower and more conventional songs (more death metal than grindcore), but the early recordings influenced other seminal grindcore acts (like Carcass).
Former Napalm Death members Justin Broderick (of industrial-thrash act Godflesh) and Mick Harris (of Zorn's Painkiller trio and his ambient metal-dub project Scorn) are currently experimenting with sound in other non-grindcore arenas.