The mutual admiration between these two noise/grind totems has never been disguised. The bands have toured together, their joint 2015 and 2025 expeditions coining the title for this album, and released a split EP as part of the Sugar Daddy Live series in 2013. But now ‘Savage Imperial Death March’ captures The Melvins and Napalm Death recorded in collaboration for the first time, i.e. writing and riffing together, to make this monumental alt rock statement. This album is about much more than dynamic power though, any aficionados of either band will know that both have an engrained drive towards experimenting with and twisting against expected metal conventions. So the thrill of this Osborne/Crover (Melvins) and Greenway/Embury/Cooke (Napalm Death) joint effort comes from the diversions and subterfuge as well as the forecasted sonic tsunami.
The kick off, Tossing Coins Into The Fountains Of Fuck, is the necessary visceral rush, an ear-cleanser in extremis. At the foundation there’s a mighty grindcore pummel topped with Barney Greenway’s guttural growl, its roar enough to pin you to a wall. As the song drives deeper, evidence of the Melvins/Napalm Death convergence breaks through the surface: Buzz Osborne’s crisp and uncrusty swipes; the math-rock rapidity charged by Crover’s drums; and the thrashing final rock out. It’s an opener that screams ‘game on’.
Other moments of riffing intensity maybe the immediate standard bearers on ‘Savage Imperial Death March’ but cannily they draw from all parts of the metal spectrum. Rip The God crawls maliciously like the finest early-Swans Death Core, Shane Embury’s bassline disintegration adding mass to Osborne’s pounding chords. The unrelenting apocalypse of Nine Days Of Rain is close to epic alt-rock but with a dark, seething underbelly that only a Melvins/Napalm Death conference could conjure. Perhaps less predictable is the frantic thrust of the mosh-ready Stealing Horses, spiked by twin guitar acrobatics and Greenway’s Yow- like bellow but contained in a sharp song structure.
Although snippets of ‘Savage Imperial Death March’ appeared on a super-limited merch stand offering at the last Napalm Death/ Melvins joint tour, this expanded release shows the real potency of the collaboration. This is underlined by the more abstract Awful Handwriting, a beat-box, electro collage (sort of Beastie Boys go industrial) and the unsettling musique-concrete of Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy. Here a collage of voiced drones, pure soprano choristers and synth-orchestral swoops bring a cinematic vastness into view.
Such experimental twists highlight the creative synergy between this bunch of musicians when they got together in the studio, there’s no pretence or reservation about the music on ‘Savage Imperial Death March’. This natural dynamic is the cornerstone to the shared ambitions here which play out definitively on the album’s lengthiest cuts. Some Kind Of Anti Christ asserts itself with a hyper-stomp before surging on a wave of synth sirens, laser-duelling treated guitars and the tumultuous Osborne/Greenway vocal collision. The song then glides away along an expanse of reverse tapes, Crover’s loose improv drums and sermonising loops. Convention says the riff should come crashing in all conquering but that quick win is not on The Melvins/Napalm Death agenda.
Pompous crescendos are also rejected on the album’s magnificent closer Death Hour. At the top there’s a slab of monumental riffing which anchors the stormy twin vocals. As the tension rises Osborne and Napalm Death’s guitarist John Cooke mesh their squalling aerobatic licks to summon up a spine-tingling Greenway proclamation. “In the death hour” he snarls with relish to mark the song’s descent into a psychedelic, swirling blues scat jam. It’s an eerie avant, absurdist finale in the best Zappa/Butthole tradition which signs off with a playful synth grab from Van Halen’s Jump.
On reminiscing about the recording sessions which produced ‘Savage Imperial Death March’ Barney Greenway messaged “Had a great time with it all, and nice to work with fellow travellers in the Melvins who also couldn’t care about pandering to demographics”. If you approached this album with a narrow outlook, searching for the Napalm blast beats or The Melvins weighty sludge say, you would miss the real fire that stokes its singular energy. This is a prime, fresh rock statement from a group of the scene’s elders who decades on just can’t stop themselves from looking forwards.
Get your copy of ‘Savage Imperial Death March‘ by The Melvins with Napalm Death from your local record store or direct from Ipecac Recordings HERE
