Album Details

• Artist: Extreme Noise Terror
• Album: Holocaust In My Head
• Label: Candlelight
• Year of Release: 1989
• Original Release: 2011
• ME Rating: Indie Classic
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2011-08-30

1989's "Holocaust in My Head," by Britain's Extreme Noise Terror, was one of the first Grindcore records, and still is one of the best. Not surprisingly, ENT's added focus on the political made them the perfect bridge between the waning hardcore scene in England and the new music. This welcome reissue is packed with reasons and proof of this band's lasting greatness and influence.

Dual vocalists Dean Jones and Phil Vane traded a lot of venom back and forth on tunes that were anthems but also shredded like some of today's noise mavens. There isn't a song among the 21 here offers respite from the intensity nor the lyrical rage. Classics about, from "Bullshit Propaganda" to "Show Us You Care," from "Conned Through Life" (a personal favorite) to "Cruelty To Carnivores." The integrity of the band is evident in the fact that they did not limit their anger to politicians and meat eater, but to their peers as well. Few songs have the accusatory power, even today, of "Punk: Fact or Faction" and "If You're Only in it for the Music (Sod off)."

Extreme Noise Terror did not set out to create a new tangent of punk or metal when they released "Holocaust in My Head", and more than Napalm Death did around the same time or Elvis thirty years earlier. What they did aim for was to put out some relentlessly hardcore music that supported songs that spoke the truth about what they saw all around them in late 80s England. A simple goal, a timeless result.

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