Impulse to Destroy

Extreme Napalm Terror are more or less what you might expect from their name - a noisy, punkish grindcore band who borrow more from early Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror than they create on their own. Primitive, crusty grind that sounds like Bolt Thrower's debut if you took away the guitar riffs and song structures. They released two albums on the notorious label Metal Enterprises, who were known for churning out short presses of rushed bands, often one-offs stocked with the same studio musicians, simply because at the time, they could sell 1000 copies of anything labeled as metal. Just how half-assed could this band be? Well....

-They put together the names of the two bands they rip off rather than coming up with something original.
-They have two vocalists, like Extreme Noise Terror, but never had a guitarist. Session players were apparently used on this record, but none were credited.
-Despite having two vocalists, the songs are titled "Part 1" through "Part 34" and no lyrics are available nor intelligible, and it is doubtful they were ever written.

That being said, this album is delightfully tasteless - everything about it is so terrible that it's actually awesome in a way. The drumming is impressive - high paced, lots of blasting, but quite creative at times with lengthy fills that lead the songs at times yet never relent in machine-gunning through grinding mini-songs. The production highlights the drums - they have a bit of the big 80s sound in the big snare tone while otherwise remaining fairly basic, but audible and clean. The vocals are decent, there are some dual vocal parts where the growling sounds monstrous, and while not being very dynamic, they remain hostile throughout the whole album. The vocals are the strongest point other than the drumming. Between those two it's a pretty good onslaught.

Unfortunately, the bass and guitar parts are really lacking. The bass doesn't do a whole lot, it doesn't drive the songs like it can do in punk and grindcore, the tone hardly has any punch (though the drums provide plenty), and it's a non-factor. The guitars are worse - while early grindcore bands would borrow riffs and bits, the guitar tracks on this record are an afterthought that seem to be parts jumbled together from ENT, ND, and Nuclear Assault. Since the band didn't have a guitarist, a session player very well might have been given the records those bands had out in '89 and told to play stuff like that the next day. While there is tons of noisy guitar work that is more noise than riffing, most of what is coherent feels borrowed. Finally, despite extreme tight drumming and well-timed vocal performances, the guitar work often falls out of time, which is very notable when it starts and stops, though it basically fades back in the mix for the noisy grind parts.

It's a shame that Extreme Napalm Terror didn't have a guitarist dedicated to the band to pull together a decent record, but it seems like it would have ruined the charm of the band being absolutely terrible and half-assed in anything they didn't do well.