Impulse To Destroy (1989)
These early works capture the essence of that spirit even if the mechanics remain unrefined and in doing so gives us a window into the formative drive behind the bizarre and ironically deconstructive music. Like early Napalm Death, these songs are an extension of punk to incorporate the more facile structural vocabulary of metal, while aesthetically communicating a sense of extremity and incoherence borne of an inability to reach an audience who, while they can be taught political or moral concepts to repeat in bleating synchronicity, cannot grasp the essence of the situation because they do not take it seriously. Grindcore was a revolution against all rock music, and “Impulse to Destroy” distances the listener from that style while using the techniques of rock music to make sonic rage peaking off the scale.
That is not to say that, like grindcore two years past its formation, this music is one-dimensional — on the contrary, what makes this and Blasphemy a hybrid of grindcore and epic, black/death metal is its ability to grasp different concepts and moods, from choleric futility to sociopathic melancholy and beyond, and unite them in a worldview in which abstract forms are harmonized across origins. In that sense, the lyrics like the music are pure psychological symbolism arising from the shape of a riff, the texture of voices, or the casual jigsaw that fits together disparate riffs into sentential meaning. From a distance, it is indistinguishable from normal grindcore, but after examination that is the last mistake an experienced listener would make with the music of Blood. A.N.U.S.
