Grindcore wasn't that hot at that time. Napalm Death had made a few non-grindcore albums and it was evident that we filled a void. There was a hole in the extreme music world that we happened to fill. Many of the reviews had passages like "I don't usually listen to grindcore, but this album is something special." Then we got word that Napalm Death were listening to our album and getting some inspiration to return to the grind. Barney had the brown Inhale/Exhale t-shirt in a video and we even heard some whispers that the legendary Mick Harris had gotten the album from Relapse and liked it. There were these little bits and pieces that slowly made us realize that we had done something special.
Anders Jakobson / Nasum interview, Decibel, 2018
NASUM released their debut album, Inhale/Exhale, on this day in 1998 through Relapse.
When doing all the many songs for Inhale/Exhale, it got very apparent that we couldn't write in the previous efficient way when it was a matter of filling the given time limit of the format with as many songs as possible. The contract we got from Relapse asked for "45 minutes of music," which we took literally, and by our old standards that would have meant 60 songs or something. That wasn't really happening, so we let the songs breathe a little by not cutting down on intros, repetitions or longer parts. And it was also obvious that we needed to have something else than just pure grindcore songs, so a few non-grind songs were added, of which many provided that groove. We used to call them "break songs," as they functioned as breaks between the blast attacks. There are a few break songs on each of the four Nasum albums.
Anders Jakobson / Nasum interview, Decibel, 2018