The Peel Sessions

Ohw how I remember buying this one some 18 years ago. It said 25 tracks on the front and it had some Napalm tracks I never heard about! Later I found out some of these were covers which in turn led me to discover some more great bands from those days.

Now I you have the ‘Scum’ album the versions of these songs are in most cases much better here. Scum suffered from either the production or from the fact that the B-side consisted of a new line-up which still had to get accustomed to the style. Here we can here a more experienced and focussed group of youngsters. The sound is more transparant, the guitars more furious and the vocals are much more varied and dynamic.

The first 12 tracks were recorded in 1987 and I featured some ‘new’ songs like “Lucid Fairytale”, “Obstinate Direction” “Blind To The Truth” (which were later recorded on the F.E.T.O. album), “Dead” (appearing later on The Curse EP) and “In Extremis” and “You Suffer prt.2” which were both extremely short noise eruptions. Personally I prefer the F.E.T.O. versions to the earleir mentioned threesome but the songs from Scum sounded very good here, especially the B-side tracks “Life?”, “Prison Without Walls”, “Negative Approach”, “Deceiver” and “Common Enemy”. Personally I would have liked liveversions of “Success” and “As the Machine Rolls On” as well obviously.

The next 10 tracks get even better. Again the band got slightly better in their performance and sounded a tiny bit heavier, resulting in very good, tight and aggressvice versions of oldies like “Instinct of Survival “, “Conservative Shithead”, “Control” and an enormously good brutal version of “Divine Death”. Also memorable are the great guitar noises on the intro of "Moral Crusade". Please note how this second Peel Session only features one (!) song from the F.E.T.O. album, “Worlds Apart” (great intro riff by Bill Steer!). I’m glad they did actually. Much more room for good ‘new’ live versions of Scum tracks left since F.E.T.O. was perfect as it was already!

The last four tracks are a bliss. The Siege cover “Walls” is slightly tighter, less hardcorish and more grinding than the original and vocally a more than adequate performance by Lee Dorrian with Mick Harris screaming along.
“Raging In Hell”, and "S.O.B." being S.O.B. covers. The vocal funniness and sleazy guitar details of the original Raging Hell version are well copied by the Napalm Death boys and their version kicks serious ass. Closing off with "S.O.B." which, kind of, is the Japanese "You Suffer".

Well, concerning "Conform Or Die" I'm having serious doubts about it actually being a S.O.B. cover since the song can't be found on any S.O.B. release and on the original Napalm Death Peel Sessions this song is NOT quoted as being a cover. I really think it is either from another band or really an obscure Napalm Death songs. It is not the most enervating song but Steers short lead in the middle is quite funny.

You want pretty melodies? You want keyboards providing texture and ambience? You want dynamics and musical prowess? HAH!!! Look elsewhere, people, cos this whole entire album will tear your empty head off and toss it into orbit!

Put it this way; I used to listen to this cassette on mornings I had to get up at the asscrack of dawn to go to work at a job I hated, and it woke my sleepy ass up faster than caffeine ever did. Within the first few blasts of noise, I mean songs, yet. And I mean blasts of noise in the best possible way, as this is grind at its purest and most undiluted. The late, great John Peel somehow managed to capture the rawest of the raw in aural form, as this album sounds like it was recorded in a garage, with trashy drums, ultra-grungy downtuned guitar and obscenely fuzzed-out bass, and Lee Dorrian's vokills right in your ear like he's screaming and roaring right next to you. And it is a brilliant representation of what Napalm were about "back in the day".

From blasts of sound only a few seconds long to (slightly) more coherent attempts at songs, alll the great classic ND stuff is here on display; "The Kill", "Lucid Fariytale", "Instinct of Survival" (featuring Mickey's most deranged whirlwind screams ever), their choice cover of Siege's "Walls", "Deceiver" (which blatantly rips off the intro riff of Repulsion's "The Stench of Burning Flesh") , it is all here, all good, and all GRIND. Lee sounds like he's demonically possessed here on every tune (he has never done it for me in Cathedral, I have to say, after hearing all this especially), and Mickey's trademark bloodcurdling "whirlwind screams" will make you cringe in terror.

Many (if not most) of these songs sound alike, but at this insanely, impossibly high level of energy and intensity who cares? And this album WILL get your blood rushing, your heart pounding, and you ecstatically screaming your head off every second of the roughest ride you will *ever* experience. Who cares if you can't understand a word they're saying, this is the best representation of ND you will get at their noisiest and most sense-obliterating and cardiac-arrest-inducing before they toned it down a little in favor of a more metal-influenced direction musically. Get this and know what true devastation is.