Fear, Emptiness, Despair

Fear, Emptiness, Despair is the fifth studio album by British grindcore band Napalm Death, released on 2 May 1994. Napalm Death's inclusion on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack brought significant exposure to the band and this album, alongside the fact that the band's label Earache had formed a partnership with Columbia Records which allowed the album to disseminate to a wider audience. RAW magazine listed Fear, Emptiness, Despair as one of the essential album of the 1990s.Template:Sfn

In a 2017 interview, bassist Shane Embury listed the album as his least favourite of Napalm Death's discography, citing the division between the vocalist Barney Greenway and the remainder of the band, and the high corporate influence over the band during the album's production as factors that undermined the final result.

Musical style

Originally titled Under Rule, the album represented a stylistic transition for Napalm Death. Fear, Emptiness, Despair maintained the complex music structures of their previous albums Utopia Banished and Harmony Corruption, but there was a greater emphasis placed on incorporating elements of groove into the band's style, resulting in a wider use of mid-paced music.Template:Sfn The group experimented a new compositional style: they started off with the drum beats and then layered the guitar riffs atop of the drum patterns. Bassist Shane Embury claims that Helmet and their album Strap It On influenced the band's style on this album. Other alternative rock groups that shaped Napalm Death's music during this transitional period were Soundgarden, Jane's Addiction and Sonic Youth, plus old favorites such as Discharge and Death.

Jem Aswad and Ian Christie of Trouser Press, deeming Fear, Emptiness, Despair to be "Napalm Death's major-label experiment", comment that the album blends the group's English punk rock roots with "the progressive metal aggression" of the three American band members, with the group's dissonance becoming "a conscious effect, not a side benefit of chaos". AllMusic's Jason Birchmeier describes it as the culmination of the direction foreshadowed on Harmony Corruption (1990) and Utopia Banished (1992), namely "unrelenting grindcore as played by an experienced, technically advanced death metal collective with the guidance of a professional producer (Pete Coleman)".

Reception

Template:Music ratings In its first week of release Fear, Emptiness, Despair reached No. 22 in Billboard's Heatseekers chart. The inclusion of "Twist the Knife (Slowly)" in the Mortal Kombat soundtrack brought the band further acclaim. The soundtrack scored a Top 10 position on the Billboard 200 chart, and went platinum in less than a year. In 1995, RAW featured the album in its list of the 90 essential albums of the 1990s.Template:Sfn In 2011, it was included in Kerrang!'s list of the "666 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die!".Template:Sfn

In 2013, Andrew Earles of Spin ranked Fear, Emptiness, Despair at number 29 in their list of the "40 Weirdest Post-Nevermind Major Label Albums". He believed the "overlooked extreme-metal classic" was recorded at the "experimental highpoint" of the band, noting that it is famous for featuring no original band members. He continued that the album "was the band's grand gesture of cycling through riffs that remotely nodded to art-punks like Sonic Youth and Swans. But with Columbia's marketing muscle focused on Entombed, Napalm Death's only venture into major-label territory alienated long-time metalheads and failed to net new fans on the alterna-kid axis".

Personnel

Napalm Death

• Mark "Barney" Greenway – vocals
• Jesse Pintado – guitar
• Mitch Harris – guitar
• Shane Embury – bass, random guitar noise
• Danny Herrera – drums

Production personnel

• Pete Coleman – production, engineering
• Colin Richardson – remixing
• Robin Grierson – photography
• Graham Humphreys – design

Chart positions

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Chart (1994)	Peak position
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