OBNOXIOUS ORCHID VINYL

The reputations of both the Melvins and Napalm Death precede both bands, the Melvins as the sludgy progenitors of what became grunge and Napalm Death as the scene-setters for grindcore. These are the bands' respective legacies, but not a complete picture of what they're capable of by any means, as each have expanded into wild new territories over and over again since their beginnings in the 1980s. It tracks, then, that Savage Imperial Death March, the fully collaborative album from the members of both of these groups, goes somewhere different altogether and bears little resemblance to anything one might predict from a casual understanding of either band. While the eight tracks here absolutely qualify as heavy music, experimentalism is more in the spotlight than anything else. This is most clear in the vocoded vocals, noisy textures, and lengthy breakdown of electronics and buried howls on the nine-minute "Some Kind of Antichrist." It's completely unlike the best-known material from either group, but fans who've been paying attention to the Melvins' post-2010s output or Napalm Death's genre-twisted later recordings won't be surprised by the collective willingness to explore uncomfortable dissonance and to linger in dungeons of uneasy sound. Fragmented vocal samples and weird blips congeal into a gruesome groove on "Awful Handwriting," and "Comparison Is the Thief of Joy" begins as a haunted sound collage before getting into heavy riffing that roils beneath ghostly vocals and electronic squelches. It's not all experimental wandering, however. The joint forces of drummer Dale Crover, vocalist/guitarist Buzz Osborne, vocalist Barney Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, and guitarist John Cooke come together to rip and shred on the very Melvins-y slow thud of "Death Hour" and the punishing, demonic sprawl of "Nine Days of Rain." Savage Imperial Death March is at times bigger than the sum of its parts, and on some tracks something completely removed from the main path of either group. The most compelling songs rank it above a mere curiosity piece, and fans who cherish both the Melvins and Napalm Death in equal measure will be pumped for this collaboration that extends the range of both acts.

A1        Tossing Coins Into The Fountain Of Fuck
A2        Some Kind Of Antichrist
A3        Awful Handwriting
A4        Nine Days Of Rain
B1        Rip The God
B2        Stealing Horses
B3        Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy
B4        Death Hour