Napalm Death

Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands, in 1981. The band is currently made up of Barney Greenway on vocals, Shane Embury on bass, John Cooke on guitar and Danny Herrera on drums. No founding members remain in the band. From 1989 to 2004, Napalm Death were a five-piece after adding Jesse Pintado and Mitch Harris to replace guitarist Bill Steer. After Pintado's departure, the band returned to being a quartet. Mitch Harris left the band in 2014 to devote himself to his personal life. Since Mitch's indefinite break, guitarist John Cooke has played guitar at concerts.

The band is considered a pioneer of the grindcore genre, blending elements of crust punk and death metal, with a sound saturated with noise, built on distorted, downtuned guitars, a crushing bass saturation, a very fast tempo, blast beats, vocals consisting of unintelligible growls or high-pitched screams, extremely short tracks and lyrics with a socio-political focus. After the arrival of drummer Mick Harris in 1985, the band gained considerable speed and began pushing the limits of how fast drums can be played. The band's first album, Scum, released in 1987 by Earache Records, had a considerable influence in metal and punk scenes around the world. With their third album, Harmony Corruption (1990), the band moved towards death metal and began writing longer, more complex tracks. In 1991, the other members of Napalm Death dismissed Mick Harris, on the grounds that he was no longer able to play as fast and because of personality differences. Mick Harris is often considered the one who popularised the blast beat.

Napalm Death have released sixteen studio albums and, in 2003, Nielsen SoundScan ranked them seventh among the best-selling death metal bands in the United States. According to former vocalist Lee Dorrian, Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration (1988) have sold 400,000 copies worldwide in total. In 2016, the team at Loudwire magazine ranked them 26th on its list of the greatest metal bands of all time.