There wasn’t a more brutal album to slam 2020 than Napalm Death’s first full-length in 5 years. Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism goes straight for the jugular with supreme extreme metal with a punk attitude. Vocalist Mark Greenway screams with wild abandonment and shows a squad as sharp as ever with no signs of slowing down. Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism is total excellence and begins the top 10 of BravePicks 2020. 

Scribe Gregg Pratt praised the album in his review: Opener “Fuck The Factoid” is actually a bit of a shocker, Barney Greenway’s vocals sounding somehow 10 years younger, and the vibe almost approaching the band’s experimental years, as does raging follow-up “Backlash Just Because”, the band absolutely taking the fire that’s been under their asses for the past several albums and running with it, but with a bit more weirdness layered in. Win-win, which is good, as for this album is-he-in-the-band-or-not? guitarist Mitch Harris didn’t contribute any songwriting (he does play on the album, though); bassist and legendary grindman Shane Embury wrote the entirety of the music on the album, and he didn’t hold back, from the absolutely bonkers post-punk noise of “Joie De Ne Pas Vivre” to the mid-tempo trudge-rock of “Invigorating Clutch”; from the discordant noise rock of the excellent album highlight “Amoral” to the dissonant grindcore of “Acting In Gouged Faith”.

BravePicks 2020 Top 30