Release Date: October 17, 2025

The years following the release of Napalm Death’s seminal second album, 1988’s From Enslavement To Obliteration was a period of significant change for the band, with the band recruiting an almost entirely different line-up for their next album, 1990’s Harmony Corruption. To view the band’s discography through the lens of their full-length albums makes this seem like quite an abrupt change, but the numerous EPs and splits they released in the interim paint a more complete picture of the band’s development - and with Death By Manipulation collecting all these smaller releases together in one place, it’s sort of ‘the missing link’ between the band’s earliest grindcore period and the Napalm Death we know today.

Striking whilst the iron was hot, the FETO line-up released the Mentally Murdered EP just a year later - hailed as an unsung classic and one of the highest peaks of the band’s early years by die-hard fans, the EP brings in much more death metal influence, foreshadowing the sound of the Scott Burns produced Harmony Corruption and neatly bridging the gap between that record’s sound and the rougher, grindier approach of FETO. Meanwhile, the band’s split with Japanese grind legends S.O.B., released around the same time, indicated the band had taken their original grinding sound as far as it could go, delivering some of the fastest and most intense material they’d ever put to tape.

Following the release of Harmony Corruption, the band’s Suffer The Children single felt like more of a fully-fledged EP, featuring an early experiment with more noisy, industrial soundscapes and a re-recorded Siege Of Power from Scum that really highlighted the difference in sound between the band’s different line-ups, giving the song a gruesome death metal flavour. By the time the Mass Appeal Madness EP was released, however, the new line-up were beginning to embrace their grindcore roots more wholeheartedly, hinting at the direction they’d take on the subsequent Utopia Banished album.

These four EPs comprise a crucial part of Napalm Death’s history, but have all been out of print for years, making them tricky to track down - in fact, only 200 copies of the S.O.B. split were ever made, making it a true collector’s item. Luckily, the Death By Manipulation compilation collects all these releases on one convenient disc. Earache is now proud to present this vital piece of extreme metal history on digipak CD for the first time.

Track Listing:

1. Mass Appeal Madness
2. Pride Assassin
3. Unchallenged Hate
4. Social Sterility
5. Suffer The Children
6. Siege Of Power
7. Harmony Corruption
8. Rise Above
9. The Missing Link
10. Mentally Murdered
11. Walls Of Confinement
12. Cause And Effect
13. No Mental Effort
14. Multinational Corporations
15. Re-Address The Problem
16. Changing Colours
17. From The Ashes
18. Understanding
19. Stalemate

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