Review of the Album "Time Waits for No Slave" by British Death Metal Band Napalm Death

Here we go with another album from perhaps England's best known masters of death metal and grindcore Napalm Death! Their 2009 studio album called Time Waits for No Slave is the next chapter on a journey that started way back in 1981 for these guys. Their 2006 studio album Smear Campaign was a decent effort and it even had a collaboration effort from Anneke Van Giersbergen. The same aggressiveness that we have seen from these guys is still there and there are these various blast beats that are still present in the drumming. But pretty much by this point for those of you that have followed the career of Napalm Death know that they have been practicing and perfecting the harsh grindcore style that they have been known for since about 1992.

This time there is no short instrumental song or a softer beginning and they waste no time in getting into the heavier stuff. Time Waits for No Slave starts off at a furious pace with the heavy song called Strong-Arm and once again, those other vocals are in here as well. By this point in the band's career, it is easy to see how they have stuck to a certain style in a genre that was once probably started by the other major British metal band called Carcass.

Other than the consistency that these guys have maintained for almost the last 30 years with their musical style, one other thing that has remained consistent is their socially aware lyrics that really make you think about life. One such example is the song called “Work to Rule” which is a song that lyrically describes a situation in which a person goes from job to job as their life consists of just working to make it through life, in short that is what describes a workaholic. Then out of what seems like nowhere there is a song called On the Brink of Extinction which is a song about the fact that humans are under this illusion that they are here on this planet to stay where in fact, this human life is temporary and we will all expire at some point. The song also mentions that appreciation is the one thing that can really redeem our lives so we have to step back and find inner peace. Finding that inner peace though takes a lot of work on our part to perfect.

There is the title track in this album and what my analysis is about this song is that it is describing that for some people on the planet, they are like wage slaves while time does not wait for them to get their act together or figure out what they really want to do in life. It is almost like these people were born into some kind of wage bondage.

One elite moment in this album if we can call it that is the mid-section riff in the song Work to Rule. There are times when these guys really do construct exotic riffs and you wonder whether they really are a true grindcore band. They used to be what I would call punk metal in the 1980s. Fallacy Dominion is a song that brings awareness to the need for having equal access to education and employment. But the one underlying issue that the song tries to point out is the fact that only there is a brief discussion about racial victimization but that there has not been any real effort to address these social inequalities.

What was mentioned earlier about the mid-section riff in the third song does not mean that the band Napalm Death isn't an elite band. It is just that their music takes a long while to really get into, absorb and enjoy because they are vastly different from most death metal bands. Even for me that is a huge fan of this band, Barney's growls can be an annoyance to handle after such an incessant period or it could be that the quality of some of the songs on this album are not as good as their earlier albums. The song called Feeling Redundant is a song that is of utmost importance at any time because the message in this song is that we should not dwell on the past because those of us that do not learn from our past mistakes are doomed to repeat them. The second half of the album falls into the redundancy of the heavy grindcore style and so, the album Time Waits for No Slave is a little less inspiring than earlier releases from this British band but still, they know how to play this style to keep you interested in their evolution and development.