“THIS ISN'T METAL, IT ISN'T PUNK, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THESE GUYS ARE DOING”.
In April 1989, the BBC aired a landmark documentary as part of its arts-themed Arena strand. The programme’s two-word title was as direct and to-the-point as the subject it covered: Heavy Metal. Metal’s great and good lined up in front of the cameras like insects under an entomologist’s microscope: Ozzy, Lemmy, Lars Ulrich, Jimmy Page, Bruce Dickinson, Axl Rose… everyone who was anyone was involved.
Towards the end of the show, things took a turn for the weird. Four suspicious-looking men barely out of their teens perched on a bed in a suburban room plastered with horror movie posters explained how their band, Napalm Death, were taking things to a whole new place.
“You’ve got distorted bass, fast drumming and over-the-top vocals,” says the bassist Shane Embury, in a dry Birmingham accent. “Everything in the band is really extreme. That’s the way you’ve got to be, really.”
To prove this, the film cut to footage of the band rampaging through the title track of their debut album, Scum. With its near-inhuman blastbeats and concrete mixer vocals it sounded less like traditional heavy metal and more like a high speed pile-up on the M6.
The documentary makers neglected to mention that Napalm were spearheading a new underground movement as revolutionary
