Scum

Brings back vivid memories of when me and my mate Ray went on a trip to Dresden. We met this rotund goth in a bar, head to toe with tattoos and piercings, real filth and after a while took her into the disabled bogs for a spit roast. We were both pumping away in her with Napalm Death on in the background and her wailing "MEIN GOTT" at the top of her lungs. I remember spaffing all over her back just as Siege of Power kicked in. As i shoot over her, she takes Ray's cock out of her gob and says "do you want fries with that?" in a faux American accent. Anyway, we go outside and there's this gammy little geezer in a wheelchair sitting there furious, giving me daggers, because he's had to wait so long, so I lean into him and I go "I hope you have as much fun in there as we just did you little cunt".

The only enjoyment I got from this was reading the review about the brothers in Dresden and their lovely and talented tattooed friend.

The sound of a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs, in a good way.

At the time of writing this, Scum by Napalm Death is the lowest-rated album on this website. Which makes sense, in a way, because Grindcore is inherently inaccessible. The genre goes out of it's way to be heavier, faster, and more brutal than hardcore punk in every way, and Napalm Death is the exemplification of this. Yet, the production is so purposeful in what I hear. Riffs are distinguishable and blast beats keep time while the singer roars lyrics of anger and nihilism. It sounds heavy and loud without being messy. Maybe a little messy for stylistic purposes, but overall it's actually pretty good! Even fans of power metal should have a good grasp of this album. Songs are a lot shorter here so nothing overstays its welcome. You get some heavy riffage, maybe a verse-chorus, and then you're on to the next song. It plays pretty well. I'll discuss the weaker aspects of the album now. One of the downsides of the shorter songs is that they tend to come and go with little lasting power. You'd be hard pressed to match a song to a riff that you remember, so repeat listens are kind of needed for full absorption. Vocal also lose a little impact as their mostly unintelligible. They contribute more to vibes than anything. This album also features the renowned "shortest song on record" with "You Suffer" clocking in at 4 seconds. It's pretty good; blink and you'll miss it! It's worth noting that After "You Suffer", you get to side b of the album which actually has a differwent lineup. With the except of drummer Mick Harris, you get a whole new band on the back half. With this comes a whole new sound, leaning into a more guttural tone than the edgy tone of the first half. Either way you cut it, you need to be a certain kind of person to like Napalm Death, and I liked em! I'm going to point to the metalheads and ask those who didn't like it to try again. I think it's worthy of a spot of the list! God bless.

Brutal as fuck, and bold as hell. Brings to mind the sound effect for a car engine of a PS2 racing game revving mixed with a barking street dog. In a good way.

I’m a metal head and this is one of the worst things I’ve ever listened to.

Reminds me of the time I got stuck in the back of a bar in Dresden in my wheelchair waiting on the accessible loo while a couple drunk lads were banging away on a horrid young lass while this shit raged on in the bar. Don’t think they even realized she was a tranny, the drunk buggers.

I saw napalm death live once at a festival and pissed myself laughing the whole time. They even heckled bands playing on the other stages haha. Scum might be noisy shit but Christ it's preferable to yet another Beatles/beach boys/the who album. Just a shame the dickhead compiling this list chose their worst album instead of one of their sweet early 90s death metal ones. Come to think of it, there's no death metal on this list at all really. 5/5 because fuck the system or something.

There is nothing positive I can say about this. It's terrible. Is there anyone on this earth that says to themselves "Boy I'm gonna put on some Napalm Death and get some shit done. Caught in a dream is my jam!" These dudes grew up without a mom. Man thank goodness for the expletive tag. I mean you can't hear shit anyway

Never judge a book by its cover unless that book is titled Scum by Napalm Death. Fuck.

Pretty damn fun to listen to, but probably never again for me. I do really enjoy hearing these "proto-" and influential records of genres I'm unfamiliar that this list is littered with. This is one of the main reasons I'm here. Even if I'm giving it a lower rating, I'm still glad I heard this than yet another standard sounding 60's pop album this list is chock full of.

What a bunch of cowardly pussies these lads are. Trying to act all tough, but we know you just crave your mother's loving teet.

Any band that opens an album with a song called Multinational Corporations can't be all bad. Unfortunately, the entirety of the song is just a squall of admittedly fun noise. The next few songs let us know what we're in for. Napalm Death is all about Black Sabbath inspired metal riffing blanketed in distortion accompanied by unintelligible growling, often played weally weally fwast. Now, some of the riffing is actually pretty cool, but I would enjoy it a lot more if I understood the lyrics. As it is, the vocals are nothing more than pure aggression and rage, and I don't find that very interesting. The songs are very short, which is a good thing for this sort of speed metal. It's kind of a shame. There's unrealized potential here. If the songs were just a little bit better, with less incoherent thrashing, and the vocals were a little more like Husker Du (screaming, but intelligible), Napalm Death would be a blast. As it is, I can't recommend this.

It's cool, you know, if you like music bereft of melodies. I'm tempted to give them a 2nd star for keeping most of the songs under 2 mins. They're tight, no doubt about that. But, tight, does not music make. Every single vocal note is the exact same (regardless of key) and that gets straight up fucking monotonous. My guess is, if you asked them every song would be in the key of \"drop D\", but I'm not listening to it again just to figure that out. I wonder if putting the lyrics in the sleeve was ironic or not. Two chimps arguing over a baby and a cat would have an equally well thought out melody. The lyrics could quite possibly be the most poetic thing I've ever heard, but I'll never know cause you can't understand word one. Hilariously, they list backing vocals for this! In fact they list two for backing vocals! Does that mean there there are hidden three part harmonies? I think the best part of this band is that they are so bad that there are no original members. Not even the band members can stand to listen to it for long. This was just hard to listen to, but I did it. Felt like what I imagine a napalm death feels like. I'm sure that was the point. Not to create music, but to bludgeon the senses. I'd've much rather just listened to the music and throw the singer out with the bathwater.

Its early grindcore! I think its pretty alright 4 songs in. I wouldn't want to be at the show, but the album is a great showcase of the emergence of grindcore. I think a lot of people bitch and moan about how you cant hear what they are saying on most of the album but no one talks about how it makes them feel. Thats grindcore, an explosion of rage. Seige Of Power is a great track. Huge sonic difference A side and B side. A side is like a mad max car, B side is a lawnmower covered in underwater chainsaws. Dragnet is a good closer.

It takes an enormous amount of work, dedication, talent and drive to sound this utterly awful. I know it's meant to be a big loud noise, and people pour over the quality of certain guitar riffs/drumming pacing/bass scales, but I just don't care about any of it, because it's painful to listen to. Pretentious shit.

Y'all don't know. This is why we're here. Get uncomfortable.

Mental and a hell of a lot of fun. I laughed at the vocals while wanting to punch people in the throat. Absolutely class.

Ok, so grindcore. Either you hate it, or you're at least a little damaged yourself. But there's a lot to appreciate here. I hate the vocals of this style, but otherwise it's clearly so influential. Musicians very skilled and precise. Anyway, glad I listened but I will not return to anything longer than the track "You Suffer."

Hard nope. Could not finish this listen. Call it bad mastering, call it lack of melody, call it what you will. It’s all cymbals and drum noise covering up someone wailing on a guitar and screaming. This is not music. It’s noise.

scum, /skəm/, noun. a layer of dirt or froth on the surface of a liquid. This album would more appropriately be included in a book of “1,001 Albums You Should Die Before You Listen To”. Why listen to heavy metal or hardcore punk when you can listen to grindcore, which combines the worst excesses of both genres? Guttural, Cookie Monster vocals? Check. Musicians that sound like they barely know how to play their instruments? Check. Jackhammer like drumming? Check. This is like if the Minutemen couldn’t play their instruments and grew up on Motörhead and Venom instead of CCR, Steely Dan and Van Halen. It’s barely over half an hour long but it feels double or triple that length because just about every song follows the same pattern: start out promisingly before devolving into the aforementioned jackhammer like drumming and Cookie Monster vocals. If this does anything effectively, it’s sound exactly like it’s album title would lead you to believe!

Erm... Worst album so far by a fair few acres 1*

Ever wanted to know what a metal band would sound like if fronted by an angry dog that knows a little English? This is it. But it's not as cute as it sounds. Very raw album. Not for me.

Decent enough guitar work ruined by someone who fundamentally doesn't understand what drums are and the guttural screams of someone with bad heartburn over top of it.

Absolute garbage. -10 stars.

Quite possibly the longest 33 minutes of my life. The only way I could get through this was to try to read the lyrics along with the incomprehensible grunts and howls of their vocalist, an exercise that had me in tears of laughter.

Atrocious. That this is considered a classic of any kind blows my mind. Angry, venomous messy noise.

This is the first band's album and the first grindcore album at all. It was released in 1987 by Earache Records. According to the Guinness World Records, their song "You Suffer" is the shortest song ever recorded, at only 1.316 seconds long. The band espouse anarchism, humanism, socialism and animal rights.

Did I enjoy this album? No. Do I think it's good? Also no, but I'm not a huge metalhead so I lack a framework to judge it super well. 5/5 rating though. Purely because this is definitely *someone's* jam and this is absolutely nowhere near the 3rd worst album out of all 1001, y'all are just mean, and if I can correct the numbers a little bit by fudging a rating a little then that's what I'll do.

Since I know that this album is the "worst" on the list according to the users, I was expecting something really bad, but I didn't find it. It's a strange experience? Sure, but it's not bad, it's just different. I'll give it 4 stars not because I really liked it (it's too much for my taste), but I believe that discovering this kind of thing, even when I don't like it, is one of my main objectives using this site (Electronic music does not count :-P). To list Beatles and Beach Boys again, I really don't need to use any site.

Grindcore has always interested me more as a concept than as practiced. It's easy to get to innoculate oneself with noisy music such that the harshness is manageable (at least the harshness that gets recorded), but even after I reached that point I felt that the songs I heard were lacking. They still seem that way, but my mind has been changed about projects in this style. It's still not a song-oriented experience, but becomes something like free jazz in reverse: There are drumming similarities but the tendency is longness not shortness. One huge speed bump for the form is the need for context - lyrical, political, historical - to make it interesting enough to sit through. But Scum has some obvious musical aspects which improve it. Tunes poke their heads through the grime. The second half doubles down on the lack of recording quality but powers through it to the end. I think I'd prefer this on vinyl, all things considered, and in that it's similar to a slab of noise I have opposite Lingua Ignota songs. Listening to that whole record helps me think of noise as music, and I extend that thinking to this record.

Love the driving & energetic guitar and drums. Not really a fan of the grunting vocals. Can definitely see this inspiring metal musicians everywhere. Not a bad album but probably not an album I'll listen to again.

Zoinks! Well, this one certainly has a lot of energy. I'm not always tuned into when an artist is taking the piss out of something or going for something else, but it mostly doesn't matter. All that matters is one's own experience with the art. The playing is super-tight, and it surprisingly drew me in at times. There are elements of heavy metal I've heard, thrashy driving punk, and they have their own sort of screaming shrieking hyper-speed style. Even though it's stressful to listen to, and a lot of the songs sound pretty much identical to my untrained ear, I liked this more than I thought I would. Bully for this project for opening me up to such an incredible variety of music!

Enjoyed this more than I expected. And evoked nights of waiting for the grindcore racket to stop on John Peel's show when he played this stuff. Thankfully the tracks were and are mercifully short. Not a genre I normally choose to listen to, but do love a bit of early Sabbath, and this was punchy and focused enough to work in the same way. Although the vocal style isn’t really doing it for me. However, I didn’t really notice that it was two different bands. Without much that I noticed in the way of dynamics (it seems to be start - make a noise - stop throughout) my attention had drifted by that point. So much so I got a few tracks into the random Spotify suggestions after the album before I realised it had ended. Interesting, and one I MIGHT revisit. Or not.

Horrific music.

Fuck that noise.

This album is a reason why metal gets a bad reputation. I say this as someone who likes metal.

gives metal a bad name

Wondering when I’d get this. Lives up to its worst rating. Holy bad.

Utter cack

SHIT, ABSOLUTE SHIT

For reference: if I dropped silverware into my garbage disposal at the same time my dog started barking, I would give that 5 stars compared with these jokers. But on the bright side...they didn't have to actually write lyrics, and props to the vocalist for not bursting out laughing at the absurdity of it all.

It's easy to see how this gets the lowest listener rating on 1001. It's hard to imagine anything worse.

One can hardly call this music

I’m an atheist but these dudes need Jesus.

Nicht Napalms bestes Album eigentlich aber halt wohl der Klassiker ich gebe aber für den Algorithmus trotzdem ne 5 HA

alle menschen müssten mehr grind hören die welt wäre ein besserer ort

As someone who’s heard a lot of dudes death growl the sentence, “I wanna see you open this fucking pit up!!” in her lifetime, I was already primed to love Scum, an album I somehow just never got around to, despite the infamy of “You Suffer” and the overall short runtime of this album. And yeah, it’s fucking incredible! If you hate extreme music genres in general, yeah, you’re not going to like Scum or any grindcore for that matter, or even anything lighter, like death metal. But thankfully, I like extreme music, and this album hits a sweet spot for me, mixing my love of punk and death pretty evenly. Side A alone would warrant Napalm Death’s deserved placement on this list, as it includes insane blast beats, infamously short songs, and insane shreds that pushed extreme metal to its breaking point. Side A also shows so much variety, and just picking up my favorites of “Instinct of Survival,” “Scum,” “Siege of Power,” and “Born on Your Knees,” you can clearly hear the diversity of their sound, as long as you don’t walk into this listen looking to mock this album for sounding the same. But then, Side B takes everything from Side A and makes it look like doo-wop music by comparison, increasing the speed and making the guitars lower and nastier. But there’s still great songs in that space, like “Success?,” “Common Enemy,” “Moral Crusades,” or even “Parasites,” which somehow fits a guitar solo in there! Scum incorporates every vocal technique, every blast beat, every downtuned guitar style – everything you could imagine wanting from extreme metal, and hands it all to you in a tight 33-minutes, and it’s amazing. Sure, it’s abrasive, and you’re certainly allowed to not enjoy extremity in music, but if you like or even desire extremity, Scum is a pinnacle, a high water mark. While I think other bands took what Napalm Death did here and added to it, but very few have done *all of it*, especially in one record, and even fewer have done it with this level of expertise. A pure game-changer, and an essential listen.

That fuckin ruled.

Absolute assault on the senses. Solid Stuff.

yousfr

If nothing else, Napalm Death certainly pack a lot into this album whether they are being paid by the song or the note. Twenty eight song songs in just over half an hour has to be some sort of record, with You Suffer clocking in at just 4 seconds. Genuinely amazing. Listening to this is like standing on top of a cliff in a howling storm screaming into the wind and just as bracing. I’ve listened twice today and just put it on again for a third go.

Gritty thrashy death metal. A fun listen. I didn’t understand a single lyric.

Really enjoyed this, though clearly it won't be to everyone's taste. Brutal, powerful, and its legacy and influence are completely understandable. Not something I'm likely to make an effort to listen to often, but happy to have it on in the background.

Repetitive to say, but I can respect what this is about and how well that's done here, but it's not for me. I couldn't tell the supposedly very different tow sides apart. Tremendous cover art, and I do hate multinational corporations.

A tough one to listen to while cooking dinner with the fam, so had a late night earphone session, kinda enjoyed the music at times... mostly the A side stuff with the earlier band lineup, the singer is clearly after adamant help from the Cookie Monster. A brave genre to introduce to the world in the 80s. How am I going to sleep after this?

I do really like more recent albums of this genre. This is a very early prototype of it, so its a bit rough around the edges and doesn't benefit from modern production techniques. However I appreciate the influence of it

I believe this is the first album so far, where I knew right off the bat that I wasn’t going to subject my family to it. Either way, I liked it alright, I think it’s cool that it exists, and I think every single person who one starred it is a huge nerd. I’d much rather listen to Napalm Death than another Elvis Costello.

The two sides are remarkably consistent given the drummer is the only constant member, yet he does drive the show. I love many ugly records, but they need to have charisma or flourish, which this purposely eschews: grindcore is grimy and smelly, though there’s joy in this, glee too. I admire this record and probably won’t listen to it again. The toddler liked this, perhaps because I referred to it “as poo poo music”. When we had Taylor Swift on in the car later, he protested and asked for poo poo music.

I’m sorry you had to listen to noise music for 33 minutes. I know it feels like the end of the world, but trust me…it will be ok.

It is some kind of evil algorithm that would give me Napalm Death immediately after giving me Curtis Mayfield. Okay, hey! I was fully expecting to hate it, but it's fine. Having been 16 when this album came out, it was probably pretty mind blowing at the time. I would not have been into it, but I would have respected it. Scum really doesn't deserve the title of worst reviewed album on this site, not by a long shot. But I can see how this album, this whole genre really, is going to be polarizing. Musically the album is pretty solid. Rhythm section is fierce, guitars are blistering. It's not for everyone, really it's not for most people. I don't love the guttural vocals, but I would say I prefer Nik Napalm's voice to Lee Dorrian's. The lyrics are pretty standard punk-thrash-metal lyrics. You know, power, fascism, conformity, corporate corruption, bleakness, etc. The things a certain type of disaffected young people have been moshing to for decades. The second half (the B-side) really accelerates and amps up from what you hear on the A-side. It's a little harder to listen to, if that's possible. This is very intense music that is hard on the ears. I'm giving it 2 stars, but really it's closer to a 3. One star deducted for the fact that now I have an earache. Fave songs: Siege of Power, Control, Born on Your Knees

2 for effort and the sheer number of songs, none of which i can say i am taken by

I was expecting to despise it but I’ve heard worse

The beauty of 1,001 is that it exposes you to artists that you probably would never listen to in your lifetime. Good or bad, its always educational. The other day it was Frank Sinatra, today its Napalm Death. I have to give these guys credit for their commitment to the craft. They've certainly carved out a unique niche for themselves with grindcore. This was an absolute and brutal assault on the senses but that's their point innit? I'd love to meet someone who listens to this for recreational purposes though, just to understand what's going through their head.

I know little about grindcore. I'd never listen to this voluntarily out of prejudice. But then I still play Crass records. I was quite intrigued by the two sides, two bands approach. Spotify messed this up slightly. Are there actually any coherent lyrics? A get up and go morning album. Not one for lovers late at night. Can't but help think there might be some melodies trying to break through.

A bit much

A little grindcore goes a long way. I admire the drumming.

There is worse than this on this list.

There are three complete songs on this album and 25 that are a riff with some growling. The three are actually really good. It's just too bad they forgot to finish making it. Do you think they play the 26 second songs at their concerts? Best track: Siege of Power

You Suffer

I tend to associate the more extreme forms of metal with a vocalist shrieking and making guttural noises while a guitarist and drummer produce a wall of atonal noise, like if Merzbow used acoustic instruments. For the first three minutes or so of this album, these guys proved me wrong, but for the rest of it they mostly proved me right. Best song: Instinct of Survival, because it had an actual melody and came before I tuned everything out.

Hardcore metal, grindcore, uden melodi, voldsomt

this is terrible

nope. not for me

Not my type of music at all. Can normally find something within it I like, but not in this case.

Snel opgegeven

Mierda inaudible

Je ne vois pas le but de cette album. Musique difficille a digerer meme si j’aime le metal. Ca se rapproche de rien vraiment que j’aime. J’imagine qu’il faut l’avoir ecouter dans sa vie pour voir ce qu’est ce style... 1*

Dios mío cómo te podía gustar el grindcore...

Ostres, a mi el grindcore m'atabala. No l'he pogut escoltar sencer. No és lo meu...

omg

Not nearly as good as I expected. Which was bad.

I'm not listening to this trash. I tried, for a minute or two, but I haven't done anything wrong to deserve such punishment. This album was released around the time I was getting into harder music, exploring metal and hard rock. It made me question everything, maybe I should just stick to the crap pop stuff. I'm sure it's only on this list as a reminder that other music can be really good.

Nope.

disgusting

Couldn’t finish it. I’m not a fan at all of this type of heavy music.

*sigh* I mean, there are some parts of the 🎵 music 🎵 that are good. Some. But I just can't on the vocals. I already hate growling style but this is just too much. I knew what I was getting into and yet still... That's two albums in two weeks that have really tried the commitment I made to actually listen to these all the way through.

The profound and thought-provoking artistry of songs like "The Kill" and especially "You Suffer" left me physically yearning for more. My only regret is that I can never go back and experience it again for the first time. But alas we cannot be melancholy that it has passed, only thankful that we were able to be blessed with this masterpiece at all. The rabid Chihuahua on "success?" Was a nice surprise though!

Yikes

...

meeeh

Couldn't get through it, not sure how people do it

Yeah, nah.

1.0

Bah.

...

First and last time I'm ever going to listen to grindcore. The music is... alright, but the vocals... oh boy. If I wanted to listen to growling I'd just sit in my lounge room listening to my dog growl at everything he sees outside the window. It's unfortunate that I have to actually rate it out of 5 stars because i wouldn't give it one if I could.

This is tricky, because I have huge respect for any band that can cram 28 tracks into 33 minutes. I'm also convinced that Napalm Death have absolutely nailed whatever the hell it was they were trying to achieve here. Plus, I had a smile on my face throughout most of it, *particularly* enjoying You Suffer. Would probably be a great live experience, until my eardrums exploded. But then again, there aren't really even any decent riffs. Ultimately, it's a 1.5, or '1' for short. If not now, when...?!

Noise for the sake of noise, lacks intelligence and every track sounds identical lacking any ideas. This genre can be challenging but this album is unlistenable and offers no reward

so bad