Bolt Thrower - In Battle There Is No Law (1988)

When first introduced to metal I was bewildered by the many sub-sections of genre within the fray. Power metal, thrash metal, sleaze, glam and doom metal...but once you're in for the ride little do you realise just how complex these categories are...in fact, despite the elastic nature of the metal genre, it still attempts to restrict by pigeon holing anything and everything new that comes along. Back in the '80s when the storm clouds gathered dark Britain produced a style of aggressive music that carved its own niche. Back then it was called hardcore, but this is where it gets confusing. The thrash/death metal genre spawned so many spin-offs, from speed metal, to grindcore, from black metal to thrashcore, speedcore, industrial blah blah...Bolt Thrower, who hailed from the Midlands in the UK lead a pack of hungry contenders to a throne that was vacant, and so hardcore was born. Listen to this superb record today and I'm sure you'll agree that it could fit into several of the genre's already mentioned, but at the time in the UK there were alot of independent labels out there producing fine and extreme bands such as Napalm Death, Unseen Terror, Defecation etc, who simply had a sound that couldn't be restricted as such. Hardcore somehow described a style of primitive sludge that could have pace, yet it wasn't thrash, it was grey and battering, but not industrial despite its vision of satanic mills and crumbling industry, and it certainly wasn't clean or tight enough to be classed as death metal. Grindcore was certainly a bracket that may have enshrouded a band such as Bolt Thrower whose debut album still remains a horrifying cult release. From its black and white sketch cover to its doom-laden sound, you can tell its pure British filth, rubbing shoulders with punk, touching on a Sabbath outlook, poisoning and smothering like toxic waste but something so different from say bands such as Slayer.

'In Battle...' is one of the best UK extreme metal records, it pours a blackness into the ocean, a grinding, droning, marching plague of negativity that somehow offers so much in its warfare. I guess it could be punk, but it's too stark, and it could be hardcore, but it's too heavy, it's just British. Imagine some vile creature from Lovecraft's most appalling setting, rising from the wastes and obliterating a city already high on nuclear power and coated in grey. Bolt Thrower have always produced a big sound, dirty, rolling, clanking and somehow remain original in a genre of sub-plots, spin-off categories and pigeon-holing. Grindcore, hardcore...it doesn't matter, Bolt Thrower covered the lot on this monster, a titan of a record that ripped the lid off the drains and puked sewage all over the scene. Only the UK could produce something so real...

8/10