Napalm Death – Utilitarian

My love affair with Napalm Death began in the summer of 1987. My brother had gotten hold of a cassette with Scum on one side, and some Septic Death on the other.

Need I say I was blown to bits? It was – and possibly will be for ever – the most intense musical experience of my life.

As I sit here in my comfy couch, 42 years old, pudgy around the waist and with a severe case of receding hair line, listening to Utilitarian by a band with the same name, but with no band member left from the recording of Scum, I am somehow brought in sync with that skinny long haired wannabe-crusty I was all those years ago.

Scum is now older than Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was back the…That in it self is mindblowing and terrible, on the other hand, getting older isn’t as bad as the leeches in fashion and botox industry wants you to believe. And here is one of the many reasons for my contiuing love for Napalm Death. They have aged too, they have fat bellies and are going bald, but the mind reminds the same – or the essence of the mind does. Surely we are all wiser than those dirty long haired punks we were back in ’87. But I am still angry. Angry at greedy businessmen – sharks in suits – who neglect basic human decency and respect for life and our planet, in favor of a fucking irrelevant buck.

That anger and the following impulse to act differently than Nestlé and Monsanto wants us to, is the reason why Napalm Death will always be so much more relevant than The Beatles.

Maybe this isn’t very sophisticated or even very interesting, but to me listening to Napalm Death and getting my hopes up for a better world is a big deal.

Peace and love, make noise not war…