Napalm Death was awesome.

Note: This also appeared on crustcake.com

Napalm Death
When: Sunday, April 23, 2009
Where: Emo's, Austin, TX
With: Kataklysm, Cattle Decapitation, Toxic Holocaust, Coliseum, Trap Them and more...

After nearly four mind-melting hours of death, grind and thrash from some of modern metal’s premier acts, veteran grind progenitors Napalm Death casually walked onto Emo’s outdoor stage and proceeded to blow everybody’s proverbial socks off.

Old enough, in some cases, to have literally fathered some of the bands playing the inside stage, Napalm Death can lay legitimate claim to quite simply being one of the single fastest and heaviest active groups in extreme metal.

Emo’s played host to two shows Sunday evening. Inside, vegan death/grind terrorists Cattle Decapitation helmed a youthful, death-heavy lineup featuring Swine Horde, Rose Funeral and the absolutely stellar Woe of Tyrants, whose recent Kingdom of Might (Metal Blade) is a near pitch-perfect slab of epic blasts, brutal breakdowns and Maiden-esque dual-guitar histrionics. Nice guys and, despite being short a bass-player due to stomach flu, dudes absolutely owned the inside stage.

Outside, though, the night was all about the godfathers of grind.

Beginning with crust-grind upstarts Trap Them, the bill worked as a primer for introducing new fans to the differing sounds Napalm Death have helped engender since their legendary inception in 1981.

Trap Them garnered much critical acclaim following their buzzing, brilliant Seizures in Barren Praise (Deathwish, Inc.). Vocalist Ryan McKenney said he hopes to see its follow-up pressed and printed by the year’s end.

Louisville, KY punk/metal bulldozer Coliseum followed. Hulk-sized guitarist/vocalist Ryan Patterson alternately barked, bellowed and berated at the audience, while bassist Mike Pascal and drummer Chris Maggio thrashed through a set heavy on hits from 2007’s No Salvation (Relapse) and the 2005 Goddamage EP.

Death-thrash revivalists Toxic Holocaust invited the now-rabid audience to break tooth and neck on just-this-side-of-campy ragers “War is Hell,” “Wild Dogs” and fan-favorite “Nuke the Cross.” Say what you will about the Great Speed/Thrash Revival of 2007, but Joel Grind and his revolving Toxic Holocaust door earn easy marks for injecting a healthy dose of fun into an otherwise cheerless movement.

Stalwart Canadian hyperblasters Kataklysm tore through a ploughman’s share of their familiar brand of brutal, technical death metal, which only served to whip the already-frothing Heshers into a manic frenzy.

Finally, two Brits and two Yanks -- four men who, let’s face it, already started to notice receding hairlines and paunchy beer bellies around the time the lads in Swine Horde were born -- walked on stage and laid down the Almighty Truth.

While some metal legends have mutated into addled cartoons of their former selves, the Birmingham bashers have fused into an even faster, heavier and more brutal unit. Even more impressive, they’ve developed into actual songwriters, a trait mostly missing altogether in the more-is-always-better approach of modern grindcore.

Released in January of this year, Napalm Death’s fourteenth (!) studio album, Time Waits For No Slave (Century Media,) has once again put the grind kings on magazine covers and critics’ short lists. Fittingly, their live show was a further extension of that single-minded dedication to unadulterated aural extremity.

Put simply, after nearly 30 collective years, Napalm Death are still, without doubt, the Gods of Grind.

Yes, they played “You Suffer.”

And yes, if you blinked, you missed it.