Napalm Death & Melvins
May has been chock full of great shows at First Avenue, but the one-two punch of Melvins & Napalm Death this past week might be its most densely influential of the year. The two acts are well or their way through their Savage Imperial Death March Il tour, and after seeing it, "savage" could not be a better descriptor for the fury and vitriol on display during this tour. The animalistic rage and overwhelming heaviness were some of the most outrageous at a show that l've seen all year, and that includes being up front in the pit during a black metal show.
The evening started out un-pretentiously with a short set by Norwegian Woods, likely taking their name from the famous Murakami book. Shane Embury's Dark Sky Burials were meant to go on, but unfortunately Shane was unable to make this night. Their 30 minute set was a wall of sound, distortion, feedback, and garbled mellotron channeled into semi-structured songs, sitting somewhere in the realm between Experimental and what folks in the know would call real Noise. It was both lush and attacking on the sense, full of texture and detail but simultaneously difficult to grasp onto in a sort of singular way. It made me feel both uncomfortable and thoroughly engaged me, and certainly left an impression.
I wasn’t familiar at all with the next band, Australia’s Hard-Ons (though as the tour flyer made sure to call out, this performance was with Poison Idea’s Jerry A), so I went into it with completely neutral expectations. The 4 piece came barreling out the gate with heavy metal inspired instrumental opener “Made Love To You”, and Jerry A sat on and looked pensively as Peter “Blackie” Black laid into the spiraling, wild riffs that made it up. Afterwards though, they slotted into mostly Poison Idea songs, and this is where I would say they lost me. I am by no means someone who has a vested interest in classic punk, but I didn’t feel myself drawn into their set at all. Something about the stage presence between Jerry A and Hard-Ons seemed off, and I don’t think simply laying the blame at the feet of age really describes it accurately. As an unbiased party, it came across like a fusion of two icons in the punk/hardcore scene for a special touring performance was the main draw, rather than how well they played together.
Melvins have long been one of my metal blind spots. I know very well (especially thanks to a friend’s recent reminder how glaring this omission is) that I should spend some time to get to know them, but it’s something I’ve never done. I’m happy to say that after seeing them live, I get it. For this tour, Melvins are going with the double-drummer setup, with Big Business’ Coady Willis destroying his kit alongside Dale Crover. Seeing two drummers on stage really sets a certain picture, and when King Buzzo dropped the first riff in “Working the Ditch”, it all came together beautifully. Some bands have this mountainous quality, and I just couldn’t believe that this group sounded so loud.
Watching Coady and Dale work in tandem is something truly special - they are simply never off beat (to my un-discerning ear), and the texture that having two simultaneous drum hits for everything fundamentally alters everything else you hear. It’s almost impossible to draw your eye away from them, except that bassist Steven McDonald is probably strutting into your eyeline in his blinding white-and-white-eyed outfit to save you. And then of course there’s King Buzzo flying across the stage, seemingly attempting to destroy every string on his guitar he’s strumming so aggressively.
The manic energy these 4 infuse into what is otherwise fairly slow and thoughtful music is not something you can get elsewhere, the performance was truly one of a kind.
Birmingham’s ole reliable took the stage to close out the night, and it wasn’t long before the grandfather of deathgrind Barney Greenway took over the stage with his insane energy. I had really been looking forward to this show as Napalm Death were another band that I hadn’t been able to see live yet for whatever reason, and boy oh boy did they deliver. In my head I imagined just how chaotic and mad Greenway would be on stage and I wasn’t anywhere close.
To describe his presence as animalistic would be to do it a disservice, as while ripping through their back catalogue of now 40 years, Barney finds it impossible to sit still for even a single millisecond. The only times he’s moving “slowly” is when he’s taking a polite moment to catch his breath between songs and deliver some very lightly worded political opinions, which is to say, he seems to catch his breath by spitting even more vitriol at the state of the world and the current administration. Backing this insanity was a bit of a unique setup, as both Shane Embury and Mitch Harris were absent this night, but that didn’t stop the machine from rolling through some of death/grind’s greatest hits of the last 4 decades, including particular standout “Silence is Deafening” and the classic 2-second wonder “You Suffer”. The lightning fast guitar-playing of their earlier material gave way to the more thumping, determined groove of the mid-2000s, creating a beautiful contrast that gave you a great appreciation for just how many sounds the band has covered (and invented?) in their time.
All-in-all an extremely memorable performance, and the circle pit that got going minutes into their time on stage showed folks were feeling it. Here’s hoping that Napalm Death releases some new music soon because somehow 2020 was 5 years ago and we could use another album in the vein of Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism - or at the very least, we could use some more of that sentiment.
