- Thursday 2 July
It is nothing less than a legendary institution within extreme music that will hit Roskilde Festival this summer, when Birmingham band Napalm Death unleash their fury. But it is also something as rare as a band that, across a career spanning five decades, has explored the rawest and most brutal aspects of music while continuing to appear strikingly relevant and vital.
The band began making waves in the English underground as early as 1981. In 1987, they released their debut album Scum, which, with its blend of anarcho-punk, hardcore and extreme metal, became a milestone in the emerging grindcore scene. The album introduced a band that was clearly not there to please its audience.
Napalm Death have not mellowed with age, and despite changing line-ups, they have retained a core spirit built on an anti-fascist punk ethos, dirty riffs, shredding vocals and rapid blast beats. All of this is combined with a dark sense of humour that makes the band’s brutal live shows a strangely uplifting experience.
With great integrity and a string of style-defining albums, the band has managed both to retain longtime fans and to inspire new generations of musicians within death metal, grindcore and hardcore. With more recent releases such as Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (2020) and the 2025 collaborative album Savage Imperial Death March with fellow pioneers Melvins, the band have once again demonstrated their ability to deliver grindcore of exceptional quality and raw power.
New music from Napalm Death is due in 2026, and there is no doubt that an experience like no other awaits when the legends return to Roskilde Festival this summer.
