Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)

Apex Predator – Easy Meat (2015)

Napalm Death’s 15th studio album, and the follow-up to 2012’s skull-cracking Utilitarian, starts off with its title track, which is an incredibly unnerving spoken/chanted/ranted monologue over tribal beats reminiscent of early Swans, or even Einstürzende Neubauten. Barney Greenway groans his lyrics, while Shane Embury screeches in a voice that sounds like a fucking Dalek; it’s enough to give you chills. As always when a Napalm album starts off slow, though, the next track is blindingly fast. The guitars on “Smash A Single Digit” have an edge like a polished-steel bandsaw blade, erupting into full-on grindcore fury in the final 20 seconds.

Other highlights include the bass intro to “How the Years Condemn,” the lurching headlong groove(!) of “Timeless Flogging,” and the dirgelike chanting of “Dear Slum Landlord…” The most adventurous song is “Hierarchies,” which features layered clean vocals reminiscent of avant-art-pop act the Cardiacs, and a short but quite shredtastic guitar solo from the only guest on the whole thing, John “Bilbo” Cooke of Corrupt Moral Altar. It all comes full circle at the end, with the long “Adversarial/Copulating Snakes.” It starts off as a full-speed barrage, but downshifts at the three-minute mark into a chugging, downtuned dirge, finally ending the way the album began, with the sounds of discordant, clanging metal.

Apex Predator – Easy Meat brings back some of the really exploratory sounds of their late-’90s work (“Cesspits” could have easily fit in on Words From The Exit Wound or Inside The Torn Apart), while retaining the intensity of their other Century Media albums. On first listen, it’s a rocket ride, leaving you breathless, but every time you come back to it, new subtleties reveal themselves.