Free Noise #41

Artist: Bolt Thrower
Title: In Battle There Is No Law
Source: Vinyl 12" LP
Format: FLAC
Running time (h:m:s): 00:26:32
Size (mb): 193
Label: Vinyl Solution (defunct)
Year: 1988

01. In Battle There Is No Law
02. Challenge for Power
03. Forgotten Existence
04. Denial of Destiny
05. Concession of Pain
06. Attack in the Aftermath
07. Psychological Warfare
08. Nuclear Annihilation

It had been a long time since I last heard this album, but I was inspired to dig it out after listening to Sanctum's 'On The Horizon' LP and hearing something that struck a familiar chord. After a good clean, I threw it on the deck and sat back. What a difference many years (and some seriously upgraded hi-fi kit) makes.

Although I loved this album at the time, being a poor punk with a barely-functioning music system meant I didn't necessarily hear it at its best. Now that's been remedied, it's almost like I've bought a new record. At at time when punks were playing with the more extreme end of the metal scale, Bolt Thrower took the bull by the horns and produced this rumbling behemoth of a crusty grind record. The bass and drums thud like sledgehammers in the solar plexus, the guitars create the sort of noise you'd expect if you gave Slayer a gallon of scrumpy before letting 'em rip, while the vox growl with a menace rarely heard outside of an active earthquake zone.

BT went on to become doomy metal parodies of themselves, falling ever deeper into a world of Dungeons & Dragons-based nonsense and conforming to pretty much all of the stereotypes you'd expect from the pale-faced death-obsessed nerds who inhabit such realms. That doesn't detract from the fact that this is an almost faultless piece of genre-defining grind.

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