POP MUSIC REVIEW : Napalm Death: Most Pure, Primal of Grindcore Bands

“We’re Napalm Death from Birmingham, England,” singer Barney Greenway growled, introducing a song during his band’s concert at the Palace on Wednesday. “This is ‘Suffer . . . the . . . Children’!”

And suffer it the kids in this hall did, gladly--every ear-hemorrhaging, brain-pounding note of it.

The style called grindcore is perhaps the purest and most primal hard-rock sub-genre, and this veteran quintet may be the purest and most primal grindcore band, with songs about, well, what the name would lead you to assume, and a beat-the-clock blur of guitars and drums behind Greenway’s “Exorcist” roar.

Even on album the songs all sound pretty much the same. Live, a mix emphasizing L.A. native Danny Herrera’s double kick-drum flurries made it even more so, at times sounding like a CD that got stuck.

No grindcore band has come close to breaking beyond cult status, but its appeal is clear. If you want cathartic release, this is hard to top.

And the absence of hard-rock’s standard, trumped-up sense of menace was a plus. Greenway said an earnest “thank you” after most every song and even dedicated one number to his unlikely hero, former Journey singer Steve Perry, whom he had met earlier in the day. The song was the entirely un-Journey-like “Plague Rages,” but the sentiment was sweet . . . and pure.