Napalm Death - Leaders Not Followers and the Originals

I’ve been trying to do this thing for so long and now I actually did it, finally! It was some three years ago when I stumbled upon a blog post which featured all the original songs off the Rage Against The Machine’s all covers album Renegades. And I think it was a very good idea and I was compelled to do the same. And the first thing that I thought of was Napalm Death’s Leaders Not Followers 1 and 2. The plan was to download the songs I do not have in my collection, that is, all the death metal covers from the Leaders 1 and 2. Sounds like a good plan, so I thought. So I started with the first one which only has five tracks plus a hidden track from the Dead Kennedys. The thing is I only have the Slaughter’s Strappado and Dead Kennedys’ Plastic Surgery Disaster. So I have to download the four remaining tracks. Death’s 1985 Demo Back from the Dead was easily available and also Repulsion’s Horrified but I hit a brick wall with Pentagram’s. I thought the Pentagram here was the doom metal band from the seventies but it turned out it was a Chilean proto-death metal band which only released a cassette demo from which Demoniac Possession came from. Back then, I can’t find any blog with Pentagram’s demo. I actually found one but the link was dead. So I abandoned that little plan of mine. And I didn’t even bother to download Raw Power’s Screams from the Gutter not until later on, and I actually found and bought the two-in-one CD of Screams and After Your Brain and have posted it earlier.

Then a couple of days ago, I had an idea of reviving that little project of mine, hoping that someone might have posted the Pentagram’s demo. And what do you know it was posted on several blogs. So I downloaded that sucker and ripped my CDs of the Discharge, Cryptic Slaughter, and so on. I thought it was smooth sailing from here on since I already got the Pentagram demo but I was so wrong. I still encountered some minor bumps like the Devastation track for example. I thought the Devastation covered by Napalm was the thrash metal band but it turned out there were at least three bands named Devastation. So I did some research looking for every releases of the three Devastations and the tracklists for each release. Then I finally found it. It was the Chicago band Devastation which only released a demo, and a re-recording of the said demo Creation of the Ripping Death. But the biggest problem was Wehrmacht track from Leaders Not Followers 2 called Fright Night. I only read about Wehrmacht because of their ties with Cryptic Slaughter but I haven’t heard most of their releases. I actually downloaded Shark Attack a couple of years back but Fright Night’s not in that album. So I looked for all the Wehrmacht songs on all of their releases including their demos but there’s no song called Fright Night! I so determined to finish this project that I’m not gonna quit that easily. So the next thing I did was find a key word, look of a song with “Fright” or “Night” in the title. I found one song called Night of Pain from their demo Death Punk while browsing a blog called Lockjaw. So I DLed the Death Punk demo and listened to it. Alas! It’s Fright Night! I even looked at the lyrics in Leaders and tried to compare it with Night of Pain and yes, it’s the same. Then, I found out that song was re-recorded for the album Biermacht. The sound from Biermacht was ‘cleaner’ than the demo, of course, but somehow I liked the demo better than the Biermacht version. That’s why I included the Death Punk version as a “bonus track.”

I can now appreciate the Leaders compilation e more since I already heard the originals. And while downloading Insanity’s Death After Death, Master’s Unreleased 1985 album, Massacre’s Chamber of Ages Demo, I was also reading the bloggers’ thoughts on these bands since I really wasn’t into this type of music in the first place. I found out that these bands really deserve to be called Leaders Not Followers! Nate from True Punk and Metal even commented on how great Master’s sound was, “There really wasn't much else out that sounded this real back then. These recordings put Venom to shame.” Now, that’s sacrilegious to some Satanist circle! Hehehe. But really, I found a renewed respect for death metal, a genre I long overlooked along with black metal. But that all changed when I heard these bands. From the break-neck speed and sheer brutality of bands like Insanity, Master, Massacre and Devastation, I felt like I lost a lot of time after ignoring death metal for so long.

Aside from the originals, I also included Napalm Death’s Leaders Not Followers 1 and 2 just in case you don’t have them yet or just plain lazy to rip them. :)


Enjoy and Happy Easter!!!


Download Here:

Napalm Death - Leaders Not Followers

the Original Leaders Not Followers