TONIGHT: Napalm Death at Showbox

By Christine Mitchell on May 1, 2016@Housetornado37

In 1981 a few teens in England got together and thought it would be fun to form a band. They decided to call it Napalm Death. In the following years, the band would experiment with their sound, taking influence from black metal, hardcore punk, and thrash metal,. The combination of these elements coalesced on the band’s legendary 54 song album Scum (which includes the world’s shortest song at 1.316 seconds in length), which was released in 1987. The album was a huge success was due to its perfect combination of massive distortion, heavy drums, speed fuzz guitar, and high end strikes. Napalm Death’s Scum led to the foundation of a new genre of heavy metal known as grindcore. Over the years the band has gone through a number of lineup changes (with many of the original members moving on to start new projects), but stabilized in the 90’s with current lead singer Mark “Barney” Greenway leading the band’s gruff metal lyrical sound that Napalm Death has become known for. Three decades and sixteen albums later, Napalm Death still leads in pioneering new sounds for the grindcore movement and show no signs of stopping anytime soon.
You can catch Napalm Death performing with local musical legends The Melvins this Sunday at The Showbox, Tokyo band Melt Banana will open.

Christine Mitchell has been poring over album liner notes pretty much since she acquired the skill of reading, and figured out the basic structure of rock songs at an early age. Whether it’s the needle popping into the first groove of the record, the beeps that signal the beginning (or end) of a cassette tape, or digital numbers ticking off the seconds from zero, music brings Christine happiness, ponderous thought, opportunities for almost scientific study, and sometimes a few tears. When she started attending live shows two decades ago, a whole new piece of the puzzle clicked in and she has been hooked ever since.