Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: Napalm Death’s From Enslavement to Obliteration Inducted Into the Hall of Fame!
Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…
You put out a magazine for 11 years, weird coincidences pop up from time to time. Napalm Death’s first Decibel Hall of Fame (Scum, obviously) was inducted way back in May of 2008, an issue flaunting a… hmmm… “regrettable” isn’t very nice, so let’s go with a disarming Children of Bodom cover image. Yeah, disarming. That’s the ticket! Anyway, Napalm’s second HOF enshrinee, sophomore scourge From Enslavement to Obliteration, pops up in the current Iron Maiden issue, just a month before (breaking newz alert!) Alexi Laiho and other high-profile bands from the Land of the Midnight Sun grace the cover of our special Finnish metal issue! These guys can’t get away from one another. Looking forward to announcing Barney and Alexi’s supergroup flexi premiere! Keep an eye out around, oh, 2076!
But for the purposes of today’s column, FETO is the story. Nick Green corralled Shane Embury, Mick Harris, Bill Steer and Lee Dorrian, extreme music legends all, for the story of how Scum’s B-side lineup (with Embury replacing bassist Jim Whiteley) could stand one each other juuuuust long enough to unleash one last bona fide grind-punk classic. You’ve already read plenty about this era via our editor-in-chief’s Choosing Death, but here the band goes in-depth about taking control of the wheel and steering the Napalm narrative out of novelty band hell. (Showing up almost five hours late for a Peel session didn’t help, but the resultant songs did!) The FETO lineup burned bright and fast; learn everything you need to know about what Mick Harris (accurately) calls “the archetypal grindcore record.”
The November issue of Decibel also features Iron Maiden, The Black Dahlia Murder, and Jungle Rot, and can be purchased here… but anyone who doesn’t just get a full subscription will be enslaved and/or obliterated.
