Napalm Death - Time Waits For No Slave

Published December 22 2008

*=Staff's pick	Strong Arm Diktat* Work To Rule On The Brink Of Extinction* Time Waits For No Slave Life And Limb Downbeat Clique* Fallacy Dominion Passive Tense Larency Of The Heart Procrastination On The Empty Vessel Feeling Redundant* A No-Sided Argument De-evolution Ad Nauseum

Genre	Metal	Mark Grenway	Vocals
Tracks	14	Mitch Harris	Guitar
Runningtime	50 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Century Media	Shane Embury	Bass
Release	28 January 2009	Danny Herrera	Drums
Country	England	-	Keyboard
Similar artists	---

So what is new with Time Waits For No Slave compared to Napalm Death's two latest albums The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code (2005) and Smear Campaign (2006)? I would say pretty much nothing. This is a mere continuation of the organised chaos and the intense metal they have created over the years. Vocalist Barney Greenway recently stated in an interview "What differs this album from previous ones are just nuances, pure development of chords. We don't have an über strategy to make creations interesting, we just want to continue to make use of the band's intensity".

What I like with the band is that they radiate such an energy, the mentioned intensity and also a genuine love for what they are doing, and they still do it damn well. Starting as a grind core band, they have over the years been floating over in to solid death metal and reaching today's more slightly thrashy and at times punk-ish shape of extreme metal. The production is the same here as we are used to the past years, pretty heavy and compact and somewhat dirty and rough.

There are a few minor try-outs on the album, mostly some guitar riffs that we have not heard before, and the occasional vocal divergency. Apart from that they hammer dead on as usual in every aspect. What I can point a tiny negative finger at is the fact that there not that many groovy and thrashy breaks on the album. Those always create a delicious counterweight to the sonic rage and I miss them a bit here. Some are present but far from as many as I would have wished for.

I do not know if it's because Greenway is getting older and have to kind of disguise something, but I sure liked his vocals more before. They are good nowadys too, but I really don't dig the distortion he has adopted on the last handful of records. That aside, there is not much else to say about this album than that it's a fully adequate Napalm Death release, even a slightly bit better than the two most recent ones. Fans can definitely buy it unheard since since the nestors of Englands brutal scene stay true to their ideals and deliver once again.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7,5	8	7	6,5	6,5

Summary
6,5 chalices of 10 - Tommy