Produced by Russ Russell
Released: 2004
If ever a phrase has suited a band, ‘leaders not followers’ suits Napalm Death like a glove. The originators of grindcore have bowed to none throughout their career but here once again, one of the world’s greatest ever extreme metal bands pays tribute to a long list of others that were also leaders in their field. From hardcore to thrash to death metal, the band has gathered 19 songs from 18 bands and given them the Napalm Death treatment: brutal, crushing and uncompromising.
Albums of covers can be dodgy affairs, especially when bands try to tackle material that doesn’t suit them, and many of them have cropped up over the years mainly as contract-fillers and a lot of them can be lousy. This one is not. It certainly helps that a lot of these songs could almost have come from Napalm’s own catalogue: ‘War’s No Fairytale’ by Discharge, for example, The Offenders’ incendiary ‘Face Down in the Dirt’ – one of the clear highlights here – or Anti-Cimex’ ‘Game of the Arseholes’ with its classic “Take your fucking cross and stick it up your arse!” line (one of their early bassists, Jim Whiteley, plays on the first and last of these). Other songs like Hellhammer’s ‘Messiah’, Kreator’s ‘Riot of Violence’ – one of the longest songs this band has ever recorded – and Sepultura’s ‘Troops of Doom’ could have been a stretch, but they’re not. Napalm Death handles them all with the respect they obviously hold for them, even Wehrmacht’s ‘Fright Night’, which seems impossibly melodic for this band.
As far as albums of covers go, this is one of the best. Leaders Not Followers: Pt 2 is ugly, savage and uniquely Napalm Death.
- Lowlife
- Face Down in the Dirt
- Devastation
- Messiah
- Victims of a Bomb Raid
- Fright Night
- War's No Fairytale
- Conform
- Master
- Fire Death Fate
- Riot of Violence
- Game of the Arseholes
- Clangor of War
- Dope Fiend
- I'm Tired
- Troops of Doom
- Bedtime Story
- Blind Justice
- Hate, Fear and Power
Rating: 85%
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