Hello everyone, and welcome back to another post! I would love to review something else or talk about some sort of chart soon, but today, I am here to post about something seemingly obscure that not many people would think is real. It's not really a song review, it's just more of me showing my amusement over this. Let's do it!
INTRODUCTION
So, I was surfing the web one day recently, and I was on the website for Loudwire, a site that posts rock and metal news and lists. They had one video on their site called "Top Ten Songs Under One Minute Long", and I watched it because I thought some great punk songs would be on it. It did have stuff like "Change of Ideas" by Bad Religion and "A.N.I.C." by Sum 41, but after those two songs were shown, there was something else. It was a song called "You Suffer" by British grindcore band Napalm Death, and it was only one second long. I'm not even joking, it just started and finished so quick that I was in total shock. So this post will basically be saying everything I can about the one-second-long song, and just how amusing it is to me.
THE ONE-SECOND-LONG SONG
"You Suffer" is a song released by Napalm Death from their debut album Scum, which was originally released on July 1, 1987, through Earache Records. The song and album are considered as grindcore, which is an extreme mix of heavy metal and hardcore punk; in fact, many call Scum the very first grindcore album. The album has twenty-eight songs on it that total thirty-three minutes and four seconds, which I think is just insane. Readers of British magazine Kerrang! voted it as the 50th best British album of all-time, and Robert Dimery included the album in his book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. "You Suffer", which was released in 1989 as the album's sole single, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the shortest song in the world, as it is exactly 1.316 seconds long. Justin Broadrick, a former guitarist and vocalist from the band, said once that "You Suffer" was an "utterly retarded" song that was "largely a comedy thing", and that they often played it as much as thirty times in a row in front of thirty local kids. The song's only lyrics, which are, "You suffer, but why?" were written by former vocalist and bassist Nicholas "Nik Napalm" Bullen. In March of 2007, Earache Records produced and released a music video for the song that contained footage of a girl jumping overlaid with fake blood and gunshot effects. This song seems really crazy now, huh? Well, it may be really short, but it's so significant because of how impressive people think it is.
When I first heard this song, I thought it wasn't even that real. It just sounded like a full second of noise to me. But as I heard it more and more, it seemed a little bit more like a song. I couldn't really tell what they were saying as well, just because of how quick it was. The more I listened to it, the more impressive I thought it was. I then listened to Scum in full, and enjoyed it. There are a few other songs under thirty seconds long on the album (which means last.fm doesn't scrobble them), and it was overall pretty short. I even followed through with Scum's follow-up, From Enslavement To Obliteration, which possesses twenty-seven songs in just thirty-four minutes. Two songs on that album, titled "Your Achievement?" and "Dead" are six and four seconds long, respectively, but I don't think they compare to "You Suffer". I can really just listen to songs like that at any time and not really get sick of them, just because of how unique and different they are.
Oh, and one important thing I want to mention about this song. When you listen to it, you may only hear the fast vocals yelling, "You suffer, but why?", but there are all of the regular rock instruments in the background, including some quick guitar power chords and speedy blast beats (and speaking of blast beats, the original Napalm Death drummer invented the term "blast beat". Pretty cool, huh?). One thing I did when I was bored one day was try to look up how to play this song on guitar, if it was possible. Turns out, it's really easy; all you do is in sixteenth notes, play three D power chords and finish on the fourth tick going down to C-sharp. I was surprised at how simple it was. It's probably not as easy on the drums, but I don't know since I'm not a drummer. I thought about this and realized that it may be a cool beginner song to play, because of how quick it is and all. So if you're interested in playing metal guitar, this may be a good starter song.
And finally, I was searching up the song once, and one of the auto-fill results was a slowed down version of the song. I listened to it, and it was still so short and so weird. I could hear the C-sharp power chord at the end a little better, though, which was cool. You can look that up if you think it might be cool, but please listen to the original version first, because that would make a lot of sense.
FINAL WORDS
So that is pretty much this post! If you want to listen to this song, you can check it out on YouTube here or Spotify here. If you liked it and want something a little longer, then maybe you can try one of the band's first two albums, which I may review in the future. Thanks for reading this, and I'll see you guys again soon!
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