"We're Napalm Death and we're from Birmingham, England," vocalist Barney tells Shibuya's Club Quattro.

Hold it there. Imagine Satan taking the form of a giant pterodactyl and dropping a titanic turd that splatters across the middle of England. That's Birmingham: an unsightly sprawl, a cultural wasteland. It's nothing to shout about. But then again, it's a fitting birthplace for Napalm Death. They've never had much luck.

Napalm Death formed in 1981 as an anarcho-punk band and then became the standard-bearer of a genre called grindcore, which is a squall of guitar noise, fierce staccato drumming, growled vocals and short songs. When the songs got longer and the guitars more defined, the band was crowned champion of "death metal." It's arguable whether Napalm Death invented grindcore or death metal, but it was certainly a prime mover in each scene and played a crucial role in the evolution of punk, metal and noise.

But Napalm Death has never been a trendy commodity. The band was making brain-melting noise too early, when it didn't get the cash registers a'tinkling. And, like Barney said, they come from Birmingham, the last place hip, young A&R men want to go to "discover" quality bands.

Because the band's never had a major record company throwing heaps of cash at it, over the years the likes of Metallica, Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit -- lightweights in comparison -- have stolen its thunder.

On top of that, the band's recently fallen out with Earache, the minor label that was putting out its stuff for almost two decades, and it's had numerous problems with promoters and distributors. No wonder the new album is called "Enemy of the Music Business."

Napalm Death might say it's perfectly happy in the underground, but the band deserves to be massive. But does Napalm Death really care? Would Barney and the gang want to be MTV darlings?

Of course they would. They'd get more beer, more beautiful chicks, the new album would be called "In Bed With the Music Industry" and Barney surely wouldn't imbue his onstage banter with so much bitterness.

First, we get: "The new album's called 'Enemy of the Music Business,' and if you've been in the business as long as we have you'll know why."

Then he's forcing the phlegm up from his throat noisily, hawking into a corner and explaining: "Urgh. Green stuff. I hate it. This one's called 'Necessary Evil.' A song we made a homemade video for -- you wouldn't have seen it over here. Surprise, surprise."

And then there's "Can't Play, Won't Play": "This is a song about men in suits. Wankers, the lot of them."

He doesn't mean the two Japanese salarymen headbanging away behind me who had no time to go home and change into their leather. He means those buggers who inhabit the top floors of record company offices and talk cash rather than quality.

But Napalm Death's enforced obscurity makes them more appreciative of the small army of zealots that enable them to escape from Birmingham to spend a few weeks on an eastern blitzkrieg.

Tonight, Barney (real name: Mark Greenway) is Conan the Barbarian in skate shorts, all finely chiseled features, tattoos, long, lank hair and a demonic growl; guitarist Jesse Pintado is a bearded Hells Angel bandit; bassist Shane Embury is a frizzy-haired, pie-guzzling grizzly bear; drummer Danny Herrera is a speed-addicted octopus firing off four Kalashnikovs; and guitarist and backing vocalist Mitch Harris is a head-banging choirboy hurling hardcore prayers to heaven, stretching his neck up to the mike towering above him and letting out high-pitched squeals like a piglet with a dagger in its belly.

They play 24 songs, and the fissile new stuff is only surpassed by the five-track medley ("Scum," "Life?" "The Kill," "Deceiver," "You Suffer") from 1987's debut album "Scum" and the incendiary cover of the Dead Kennedys' classic "Nazi Punks F**k Off." In short, the new stuff is back to their grindcore roots and as good as anything they've done in more than a decade.

At Quattro, Napalm Death requested the safety barrier be removed so the mosh pit is pressed up against the stage: a clear-cut invitation for fans to invade the band's space and create total mayhem, which they promptly do.

These fans don't just stage-dive, they attempt suicide, and they want to take as many with them as possible. They take running jumps back into the mosh pit, launching themselves as high and fast as possible, pulling their legs up beneath them to form human cannonballs, landing on the heads of their victims. It's a miracle no one is maimed, or even killed.

The fans' obsession with death and destruction (there's the usual "chaos" and "disorder" T-shirts, but the best is on the back of a teenage girl; it reads, "Mommy, can I go out and kill tonight?") is quite ironic given Napalm Death's decision not to burn out in a blaze of rock 'n' roll glory, but rather keep plugging away year after year.

After the encore, they spend a good five minutes shaking every outstretched hand.

Later, backstage, and the band is sitting quietly, all alone, in the dressing room. No groupies, no autograph hunters, nothing. (Barney has to get off his arse and go out to the crowd to pose for photos with awestruck fans.) It all seems quite sad on their last night in Japan. You'd think at least a couple of chicks could have made the effort to go and sit on their knees to give their egos a welcome massage.

Napalm Death is the Jesus Christ of hard rock. It saved the soul of heavy metal by helping reinvent it as grindcore: putting the sword to the spandex slacks-clad brigade through the sheer brute power of its music. But it was never lauded by the mainstream music press, never pushed by a massive record company. It was too extreme for its time. It was crucified and left for dead, but it refused to give up the ghost.

This band should have sold millions. But it still has its disciples. And the music is as hard as ever. Will it's kingdom come? It might be too late for that, but for a fervent minority it will always rule.