The Melvins with Napalm Death – Savage Imperial Death March
Release Date: 10th April 2026
Label: Ipecac Recordings
Bandcamp
Genre: Sludge, Grindcore, Noise Rock.
FFO: Godflesh, Swans (early), Neurosis.
Review By: Jeff Finch
This review must begin with a possible disclaimer: listening to any work by Melvins and/or Napalm Death should be a prerequisite for listening to this album if you don’t want to be continually surprised, as both of their names adorn this album and there are always moments that feel stripped solely from one of their catalogues. This listener did not complete said prerequisite, having never listened to Melvins until this album, Savage Imperial Death March. And for the longest time it’s because I simply mixed the name up with the Misfits. Honest mistake. But upon listening to this album in its entirety, there just HAS to be an entirely separate realm of music hiding in those Melvins albums, because this record left me baffled, longing, moshing, and after a bit of time to process, incredibly intrigued.
Now, while I did mention that it feels like there are moments that feel stripped from each of their discographies, the educated assumption here is that more is pulled from Melvins work and thus creates the majority of the experimentally inclined results herein. The riffs are straight molasses, Barney Greenway still sounds like a savage monstrosity from the depths of hell, and the metal is catchy, punchy, and downright nasty, one’s face likely to be stuck in “stank” mode for a bit. But it’s the foray into ritualistic, primitive beats and soundscapes that’s almost too jarring for a listener that might have just zoned out jamming. Such is the case with Some Kind of Antichrist; clocking in at over 9 minutes, more than half the song features these eerily calming moments, a drastic departure from opening track Tossing Coins into the Fountain of Fuck, which features off kilter beats and time signatures, almost as if the assignment was for one part of the band to play like Melvins and the other to play like Napalm Death. But this cacophony is clearly the entire point, especially with these two long-running legends teaming up, and it works well knowing this. The groove isn’t meant to be straightforward, nothing is straightforward, and it hits hard, seeming to dispel any notions of doubt that the album wouldn’t live up to hype.
It certainly lives up to hype, but what expectations were contained therein? There is a lot of music here, a bevy of gnarly moments in every song, even the shortest one here, the ‘interlude’ Awful Handwriting. And for lack of a better description, that’s what this song sounds like. It sounds like awful handwriting looks and as bizarre as the beats and chants are, as if ripped from a hip hop song, it throws listeners into a trance, the mind tripping over itself as it asks the questions ‘huh,’ ‘why,’ or perhaps ‘who?’ It’s not a song to come back to individually, but in the flow of the album, it certainly gets the listener’s attention. Early oddities in the album give way to a middle section full of hypnotic, draining riffage, where the riffs blur together with distortion, rhythm less a pattern and more a constant pressure, with the added elements of space and noise coalescing to create even more atmospheric tension. Dare I say meditative?
The final few tracks provide the perfect segue, as the listener has just been dragged through molasses soaked riffs, making the reintegration of the chaotic violence of Napalm Death even more unhinged. The shifts experienced mid-song, mid-album, mid-moment, it all comes together to bring the music world an album that feels like a hypnotic ritual being constantly destroyed by chaotic violence, where Barney Greenway was summoned instead of the devil.
Once the album ended, I was torn. Now as I sit typing this, those feelings have greatly shifted. I wasn’t sure how I felt about then, but now I do: I love it. It’s so unique for someone like myself who has never experienced Melvins and loves Napalm Death to hear the sonic maelstrom created when two mammoths combine their powers and unleash their fury. Whether you’re in the same boat or you happen to know both bands, or even neither of the bands, do yourself a solid and listen to this record, it might be the most chaotically hypnotic thing you hear all year.
(4.5 / 5)
