Genre: Death Metal | Label: Earache Records
Location: Birmingham, England| Listen: Bandcamp
During Napalm Death’s death metal years in the early 90’s, Earache had them releasing singles, EPs, and other small releases between albums. During the writing of “Utopia Banished,” Napalm Death made sure to write a bunch of additional songs, something that wasn’t a problem, as they were on fire in the writing department, especially with the addition of new drummer Danny Herrera. Bassist Shane Embury has said something that he forgets how to play a lot of these extra tracks since they wrote so many, but that doesn’t mean these songs are just just discarded album material.
First and foremost, if you don’t like “Utopia Banished,” then the songs on this EP won’t do it for you either. Out of the three tracks, one is a re-recording from that album, and the other two are exclusive tracks. They opted to record the three songs at a different studio with a different producer than “Utopia Banished,” so the production is a little different. It’s a little more airy, especially with the guitars, but it’s not a glaring difference. The title tracks differs from the album version slightly – it contains a bit of an intro with some samples, and the backup vocals are a little more prominent. The song itself has a really cool death metal groove with blasting section in the middle, and is a classic song of the band’s death metal era.
The two exclusive tracks presented here are also rather enjoyable. “A Means to an End” has a pretty groovy UK death metal riff that’s got a nice amount of speed, but generally also has a lot of speed with interesting riff patterns that get into some punk territory too. Meanwhile, “Insanity Excursion” is a lot more straight forward, as it alternates between blasts and fast thrash beats for its 2 minute duration. Again, the riffs are interesting enough, but I’m sure a song like this was delegated to the “non album material” bin due to its simplicity.
Do you need this EP in your collection? Unless you’re a diehard Napalm Death fan that has to collect all their releases, it’s not something you need to hunt down. Thankfully, the two exclusive tracks are available on the extended edition of “Utopia Banished,” along with another 4 bonus tracks, making it a 21 track album. If you really want to hunt down the version of the title track that’s on this EP, it appears on the “Noise for Music’s Sake” compilation. I would certainly pick up the stand alone EP if I found it for cheap, as the artwork has always been striking, but I’m in no rush to hunt for it.
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