(From 1989 to 2004, Jesse Pintado was the band’s second guitarist he died in 2006.) Dorrian was gone soon, too, but his replacement, Mark “Barney” Greenway, would head up a lineup - guitarist Mitch Harris, bassist Shane Embury, and drummer Danny Herrera - that has remained steady up to the present day. Napalm Death got a reputation for being one of the fastest and most extreme bands on Earth their music drew from punk, hardcore, and thrash, but took only the most aggressive elements of these styles and turned it all into a blasting blur, over which vocalist Nik Bullen (soon succeeded by Lee Dorrian) barked slogans. In its own way, Scum was a split LP, too it had two completely different lineups on its two sides, with the only constant being drummer Mick Harris.

Their first album, 1987’s Scum, was the third Earache release, following the Accüsed’s The Return Of Martha Splatterhead and a split LP between Heresy and Concrete Sox. It took them until 1986 to get anything like a steady lineup, but they had a solid live reputation nonetheless, which got them signed to fledgling label Earache Records.

Though they started out as a hardcore punk duo, they were calling themselves Napalm Death as early as 1982, and gigging and recording demo tapes. Like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, they hail from Birmingham, one of the ugliest, most crushed-under cities in the country’s post-industrial West Midlands.

Napalm Death are one of the most important bands to come out of the UK metal scene, period.

Ranking deftones albums