The Onion‘s AV Undercover series is a pretty great institution. Now in it’s seventh year, bands visit The AV Club’s Chicago headquarters and are thrown in a room where they cover an ever-dwindling list of songs. Once another band covers a song, it’s crossed off the list. Hell, it more or less helped bring GWAR back to prominence a few years ago, and they’ve been given a permanent invite back every year. It’s also allowed us to see Melvins covering Butthole Surfers, Reggie Watts do a really weird version of Van Halen’s “Panama,” and Wild Throne cover Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. However, someone forgot to tell Napalm Death how things work.
The band showed up to, as far as The AV Club knew, cover a Motorhead song in tribute to Lemmy. As interesting as it would have been to hear Napalm Death pay homage to a god of rock, the band instead showed up and played their own song, “How the Years Condemn,” from last year’s Apex Predator – Easy Meat. So any disappointment of the band not playing someone else’s song is forgiven by seeing them rip through one of their own in a professionally shot live video in a small room.
