In the early ’90s, Earache signed a distribution deal with Columbia Records. As a consequence, a bunch of albums that would never otherwise have made it into mall record stores did so, including Carcass’s Heartwork, Entombed’s Wolverine Blues, Fudge Tunnel’s Creep Diets, Godflesh’s Selfless, and Napalm Death’s Fear, Emptiness, Despair. The Carcass, Fudge Tunnel and Godflesh albums are today justly regarded as those bands’ creative peak. The Entombed album isn’t bad, but its immediate predecessor, Clandestine, is undeniably superior. Similarly, Fear, Emptiness, Despair is just okay.

But because of the Columbia hookup, it’s one of the band’s best-selling titles. Hell, the song “Twist The Knife (Slowly)” was pulled for the Mortal Kombat soundtrack, which means the members of Napalm Death have a platinum plaque to their name.

Musically, Fear … is sludgy and kind of slow, by Napalm standards. You can headbang to songs like “More Than Meets The Eye” without feeling like a 20-year NFL veteran afterwards. The mix has a lot of separation between guitars; they’re way off on the left and right sides, with the drums clattering and thudding in between: not that many blast beats, but a few interesting almost-tribal patterns here and there. Barney Greenway’s vocals are super-chesty; he sounds like a bear, and bassist Shane Embury, who usually provides unholy, goblin-like screams as a counterpoint, is rarely heard, which makes all the roaring kind of monotonous after a while, especially since most of the songs have nearly identical vocal melodies. Again, not a bad album, just disappointing when compared with their sharper work.