Time Waits for No Slave is the sound of a band at the height of its powers. Heading towards thirty years of existence as a band, Napalm Death show no signs of slowing down on this, their fourteenth full length album.

Time Waits for No Slave is the sound of a band that has written its own rule book on extreme metal and is still sounds hungry for more. There’s no sitting on their laurels or doing an album by the numbers for Napalm. Instead, what we get is another furious grindcore assault. For the most part Time Waits for No Slave sounds like a mix of Enemy of the Music Business with the grinding grooves of Diatribes and Inside the Torn Apart and the dissonant grind of Nasum who have been acknowledged as an influence on the band. Now, if you like your grindcore, that should be a combination made in heaven and it is.

The album literally blasts through the speakers with the one-two opening combo of Strongarm and Diktat both of which remind me of the face ripping anger that the band channeled on Enemy of the Music Business. Other album highlights include the title song; Time Waits for No Slave with its slight nod towards 90s Napalm and even a clean sung line from Barney, Life and Limb with its awesome vocal attack and groove, On the Brink of Extinction which has a thrash riff that’s gone grind, the insanely heavy Fallacy Dominion which shows a slight trace of the band’s punk past but combines it with an almost experimental flavour and the completely awesome Passive Tense which could have been on Diatribes except that it’s a lot heavier than anything found on that album. Larceny of the Heart gives new meaning to the word death grind as is one of the heaviest songs on the album with some awesome backing vocals from Mitch Harris while De-evolution ad Nauseum ends the album with another awesome display of chaotic jagged grindcore mixed up with some seriously heavy death metal riffing.

The band sound like they’re in top form right through the 50 odd minutes that this album lasts for. Mitch Harris’s guitar playing is fantastic as he just puts together one awesome riff after the other while still managing to groove like a motherfucker. This has to be one of Danny Herrera’s best performances as the man behind the kit just slays and along with Shane Embury holds up the bottom end with some seriously heavy grooves. Barney Greenway sounds like a monster through this album and while he may be using some effects to heighten his roar, the real development is Mitch Harris’s backing vocals that are used a lot more on this album and used very well at that.

I’m still not sure if this is better than Enemy of the Music Business but I think it just might be but Time Waits for No Slave pretty much destroys the last three albums that the band released which were all pretty damn good in their own right. Napalm Death sound more relevant, urgent and just fucking rabid than they have in a long time. 2009 is just a month old but this is the album to beat this year and it’s going to be one hell of a mountain to climb.

Label - Century Media

Year of Release - 2009