Music

Metal legends suffer massive sound fail at festival

by Jeremy Mersereau

For those of you not familiar with the more extreme ends of the metal spectrum (i.e, those of you whose wardrobe isn’t limited to black hoodies and own more than one pair of pants), grindcore is a metal offshoot characterized by extremely high tempos, heavy distortion, and songs that last about as long as the average person does before changing the channel away from Property Brothers. English genre pioneers Napalm Death have been at it since 1981, and are widely regarded as one of the very best grindcore has to offer…which is why the end their performance at this year’s Brutal Assault festival in the Czech Republic was so disappointing/enraging to their fans.

According to festival attendee/YouTuber ‘chaosvlad666’ (yep, this guy’s in the demo alright), sound issues started to plague Napalm Death near their end of their set, leaving only drums and vocalist Mark Greenway’s incomprehensible growls and screams audible for the last two songs. Whether due to cranked stage monitors or amps, the band doesn’t seem to notice that the main speakers are outputting what sounds like the grunts of a powerlifter set to an annoying guy practicing blastbeats at Long and McQuade. Witness the aural carnage below:

Well, as bad as that sounds, it couldn’t have lasted too long. After all, this is the band with the Guinness World Record for shortest recorded song (“You Suffer”, which clocks in at 1.3 seconds).