The second Napalm Death album improves on its predecessor by managing to maintain consistent personnel across both sides — but not the same personnel as Side B of Scum. Vocalist Lee Dorrian, guitarist Bill Steer, and drummer Mick Harris are all accounted for, but bassist Jim Whitely’s gone; in his place is Shane Embury, who’s since become the band’s anchor, right up to the present day.

Interestingly, the lineup here, most of whom were responsible for the comparatively inferior material on the debut’s second half, achieve greatness by emulating the first half. The songs on F.E.T.O. have the blinding speed of the latter half of Scum, and the majority of them come in under the 90-second mark, but the riffs aren’t just windmills of fury; they’ve got the thrash-punk intensity of longer, more complex songs. In just 36 seconds, “Private Death” has dynamics and an addictive headbangability. When the band really “stretches out,” as on “Unchallenged Hate” or the album’s longest song, “Display To Me …” they get into a thrash-meets-D-beat zone that’s like drinking ice-cold water with electricity running through it.

The other thing that makes F.E.T.O. such an astonishing achievement is the relative cleanliness of its sound. Yes, the guitar and bass are both grinding, distorted blurs, but they’re really well recorded and separated — you can hear what Steer and Embury are doing, independently of each other. Similarly, Mick Harris’s drums have a much more visceral, whomping impact than you might expect at the speed he’s playing, and the contrast between his high-pitched, goblin-like screeches (a role Embury would later take over) and Dorrian’s guttural growling is extreme, but complementary. This is about the best this type of music could ever possibly sound, which perfectly suits the totally adrenalized performances.