Inside The Torn Apart (1997)

Inside The Torn Apart (1997)

The immediate predecessor to Words From The Exit Wound, 1997’s Inside The Torn Apart is basically a dry run for that album. Napalm Death pull all the same tricks on this disc as they did on its successor: they open strong (“Breed To Breathe” is a fantastic, hard-driving single), they throw some curve balls at the listener (“Birth In Regress” features an industrial-ish main riff, a breakdown with clean guitars, and a catchy chorus), and they keep the drumming closer to rock — with some tribal elements at times — than grindcore or death metal. Hell, the title track could almost be by Ministry.

On their four mid-’90s albums, Napalm Death really seemed like they were trying to break the bounds of not only their own long-established style, but also the subgenres they were experimenting with. The band that had begun its career as the most extreme of the extreme (the one-second “You Suffer”) had apparently realized that it was all too easy to run into a creative dead end. Of course, personnel turnover had a lot to do with the changes: by 1998, the only member whose tenure dated back as far as From Enslavement To Obliteration (never mind Scum or the earliest days) was bassist Shane Embury, and Barney Greenway, Mitch Harris, Jesse Pintado and Danny Herrera had made the band their own.