Some facets of Napalm Death's existence could seem ironic – they've encouraged peace, understanding, and fellowship amongst mankind using some of the most confrontational, visceral music recorded. Some elements seem paradoxical - they've established a singular aesthetic by never making two albums that sound exactly alike. Some are exercises in various forms of extremity – they hold the Guiness Book Of World Records title for shortest song ever recorded (the 1.316 second “You Suffer”) and have existed for over thirty years with a lineup that, by the second side of their first album, featured no original members. Regardless, they have produced a body of work possessing a remarkable consistency, never sacrificing either their artistic or ideological integrity. The band released Utilitarian, their 15th full-length, earlier this year and are about to embark on a tour with Municipal Waste and Exhumed. I managed to get a few questions in with their frontman, Barney Greenway.
Utilitarian strikes me as one of the most succinct, direct titles Napalm has employed in some time. How does utilitarianism factor into your creative process?
I didn't want to make it into some kind of analysis of philosophical theory. That would be pretty tedious. I did want to use word association because, if you look at the Napalm album titles, we've always used wordplay. The utilitarian thing was more about examining the whole process of living in a natural way, and to ask the question of whether it's worth it to live with ethical considerations. Because you do ask yourself that at points. That's the heart of it.
Was there any concern that espousing such an idea could be taken the wrong way? I'm not the most well-versed in philosophy, but seems like utilitarianism, in its original form, holding the happiness of the majority as its primary end, could be utilized to justify much of the oppression and exploitation that Napalm Death has always decried.
Absolutely. That's one of the things I found quite fascinating about it, that it's endorsed by people across the spectrum. It's used by animal rights advocates and humanitarians, but also those with no problem stepping over people to get where they need to go. Obviously the only thing I can do is explain what the significance of it was. I certainly don't have any truck with the sort of people in the latter category. You have to be aware that nothing, especially in the band situation, is ever immune to criticism. Life isn't perfect, bands aren't perfect, so it is as it is.
The socially conscious elements that Napalm has always embraced seem like something of a rarity within heavy music at this point and, when they are present, often seem somewhat dispirited and apocalyptic. Despite an endless supply of oppression and degradation, how do you avoid presenting a defeatist attitude when writing?
I'm just trying to present reality. It all depends where you come from, but I'm coming from a humane perspective. I consider myself to be a very base-level humanitarian. To me that means human rights and dignity, but also rights for other sentient beings. So whenever we speak about stuff there's always going to be an unsavory element to it, because that's the way the world is. Unfortunately, not everybody thinks or acts in humane terms. But hopefully there's the positive aspect too, in that you can stand up as a human being who's trying to live in a humane way. I always try to be positive, but I do recognize that life has its positives and negatives and you can't brush either off. You can't escape negativity; it is as it is, can, and should be.
Utilitarian was promoted with the “Occupy Napalm” campaign. What about the Occupy movement resonated with the band to the extent that this would be employed?
I may not have been everywhere they were staged, but I consider myself to stand in solidarity. Let's not forget that they weren't the only people who promote that sort of thing. For many years there have been lots of movements who were perhaps a bit more fringe because they were fragmented, so they didn't have that kind of numbers or coverage. We haven't been afforded them, but we have as human beings the same rights as any others. And if that involves challenging the higher echelons of power, we should be able to do that.
Of course, people like hanging on to their power, so they smear people involved with things like the Occupy Movement, who are within their rights to challenge authority and point out what's not acceptable. And the organs of the state are being used against them. You have the right to resist that as a human being. People always quote laws, but let's not forget that laws are a man-made entity and they suit some people more than others, so some balance is needed. And hopefully people like the Occupy Movement will continue to challenge the upper echelons of power. Because we all know what can happen when power gets out of control.
There have been other artists that received some negative attention for trying to utilize Occupy imagery for their own promotions. Was there any backlash when you employed it?
If people feel negatively, that's fine. I know what my intentions were and what the band's intentions were. I would say that Napalm has always been a band that's active – coming back to this word again – ethically. That's not to say we have more rights than other people, but if we were going to take flack then so be it. But it was done more to show solidarity than anything.
From the start, Napalm claimed some fairly diverse influences – old hardcore and metal but also Swans, Joy Division, etc. In recent years, however, it seems like the mark that these artists have made is considerably more noticeable in your music than on the early albums, especially in the variety of textures and songwriting approaches employed. Has there been a more conscious attempt to bring these influences to the forefront or has that been a part of a more organic evolution?
It certainly hasn't been forced, but it did get to the point where we felt that we could do so much with some of those influences. We didn't want them to sit on the sidelines so much. Consider something like From Enslavement To Obliteration, where the opening track was Swans style but the rest of the album was two hundred miles per hour. Swans have been a big influence on Mick and Shane but it's not immediately obvious there. We felt that the styles we were using were too good to be fringe. That doesn't mean we're going to alter our attack as a band to suit those influences. It's all about wrapping everything together so that it works, but you can still hear the traditional Napalm sound. So now that we've incorporated it into our normal attack, you'll hear something that's influenced by Swans, something that would've been slow, painful, and depressing, but the way we've done it is to play it at two hundred miles an hour. We were unsure, because we thought it might sound a bit shitty, but it worked.
Has it been difficult as a vocalist to tackle some of these different approaches you're taking?
Surprisingly not. Honestly, I always thought I was a bit of a one-trick pony. I can do really gruff or really shrieky, but I've surprised myself. I hope it doesn't sound arrogant, but when I put my mind to it I feel like there's nothing I can't do, that I can make it happen.
You've done a variety of appearances on albums by younger bands lately – SSS, Extortion, and Withered come to mind. What do you look for in bands with whom you collaborate?
My first checkpoint for a band I don't really know about are the lyrics. I couldn't bring myself to endorse something that was sexist or racist or anything like that. It's not in my makeup. I wouldn't associate myself with that outside of music, so I'm certainly not going to do it with a band. After that, I don't know. I've been lucky that the bands who've contacted me are really great. Extortion really nail the 80s fast hardcore sound but still have some freshness. I thought Withered had an interesting take on the whole gloomy, downbeat style. The latest thing I've been on is by Liquorbox, which is basically a bluegrass/country sort of thing. That was really different for me. Me and country music have never been obvious bedfellows but I thought it was great. More than anything, I get a kick out of seeing people happy and being able to help them out. If it helps them along and they're nice people, I'm more than happy to contribute.
You did a brief spot in an episode of [British television drama] Skins, which seems like something of an unlikely place for your music. How did that come about?
It was something we had to think about for a while. We've done a lot of TV because Napalm's kind of a go-to band if somebody needs a lot of noise. But at first we didn't know if it would be a sort of parody or full of stereotypes and cliches. In the original script, they were trying to present the band as like a Guns N' Roses rock and roll excess type thing. The guy was a Napalm fan actually, but I had to tell him that if we were going to present our music we wanted to do it with a more DIY attitude to show that bands can have a bit of humility. And he rewrote the script to work with that. Originally I even had an acting part but they took it out, probably because I couldn't act my way out of a paper bag. [laughs] It was a worthwhile experience though. Skins definitely does the disaffected youth thing in quite a respectful way.
Over the course of Napalm's existence, you've played shows in some fairly out of the way places, whether that was South Africa as apartheid was ending, Russia as the USSR was falling apart, or more recently your shows in Nepal, Siberia, and Morocco. What does it mean to you to be able to reach audiences that most bands aren't able to?
It's a privilege and an honor that people consider us to have sufficient appeal to invite us to their countries. We'll always do the European and U.S touring circuits, those are the main places that people go. But it's easy, even though I still love what I do, to become somewhat jaded doing that. So going elsewhere keeps you on your toes, especially when the resources they have are different from what we're used to. It gives you an appreciation and helps with not taking things for granted, not assuming that things will be laid out on a plate for you.
Is there anywhere you haven't been yet that you especially want to?
There's lots of places. I'd like to play Pakistan or India. We've played all over Russia, but it would be great to play a place like Kazakhstan. Actually, this is a true story, though I can't say it would've happened necessarily. Some guy got in touch with a friend of mine and was saying he could get us a gig in North Korea. It would've had to be in a border town in case we needed to escape. Because obviously the authorities couldn't know about it, and we might need to get away quickly. And he was serious. I don't know about doing it, but it would be quite a coup.
Your upcoming tour features both Exhumed and Municipal Waste, each of whom stands in fairly stark contrast to what you do--the former being gorier and the latter considerably lighter-hearted. Is there any sort of balance you like to strike with the bands with whom you tour?
The good thing about being in Napalm is that we get asked to do a wide variety of stuff. One thing we'd like to do is make a Napalm/Converge tour happen [the two bands recently released a split EP]--that would be wonderful. And then we get asked to do death metal tours, so we get the whole of the spectrum. And there's no question that you get different people out at different kinds of gigs, and it's nice to not preach to the converted all the time. But even on a death metal tour, that's not going to stop me from saying what I think needs to be said, endorsing a lifestyle I feel I need to endorse. So whoever hears it, it won't change our approach.
Has that variety ever been a problem, perhaps in terms of sharing the stage with people whose worldviews are antithetical to your own, or crowds that haven't been receptive?
I've never cared, to be honest. One thing I learned from the UK hardcore scene before it went down the shitter is that people used to get very suspicious of so-called outsiders coming in to populate their scene. But if you're going to talk about wide-ranging ethical issues, what's the point in just telling it to the people who've heard you a hundred times before? That's no disrespect to them, they've always been there as a support base. You have to be prepared for a little challenge, and we need to go out and endorse what we consider to be important, regardless of where.
On several legs of the tour you're also going to have Attitude Adjustment and Dayglo Abortions opening, each a band Napalm has claimed as an influence and covered. Do you feel like you have some responsibility to your predecessors to help expose them to people who might not have otherwise given them a chance?
I don't know if it's a responsibility exactly. But that period in the 80s when most of those bands were most active remains an incredible time in terms of the music's vibrancy. Those underground demos, bedroom demos in a lot of cases, the independent releases were absolutely indispensable. I can't speak more highly of them. They mean so much to me and to the other guys. But it's not a responsibility really--I'm just extremely happy to see those bands, if only for a few gigs.
Are there any such bands you haven't had a chance to share a stage with that you'd like to?
I did hear a rumor, though I think it was one started just to get me going, that Los Crudos were going to get together to play a couple of the shows. My head would've popped. [laughs] If you want to talk about primal, gut feeling that music can have, that's one of your bands right there. But aside from that, the obvious ones. Siege from Boston. Minor Threat back in the day. If Negative Approach could get on the shows – they were pivotal, no question.
Until recently, Napalm had only done a few split records, but with the recent Converge split and the upcoming Melvins split it seems like the frequency is increasing. What motivated the uptick, and how do you determine who would make a good complement to what you do?
It's pretty simple really. We sat down and realized we were only doing album-tour-album-tour, and doing that is great, but we needed to do some other fun stuff. The Converge split came together quickly but I must hold my hands up and say that I'm dragging my heels a bit with the Melvins tracks. We've got one finished and I've got another one to do. So that one's a little delayed and I'll take full blame for that, so people can shoot me if they expected it any time soon. [laughs] But it will happen, and hats off to Shane for really hammering these things home.
Any final thoughts for the readers?
I'd just like to thank everybody for the support. It's amazing to me that we're still able to come to the States despite the periods where the sort of thing that we do had some question marks around it. But we've always been pleasantly surprised and the appreciation of what we do is humbling. We'll always try to make our shows something that people will remember.
---
Napalm Death will perform live at Kingdom (10 Walnut Alley, Shockoe Bottom between 17th and 18th Streets) on Friday, November 23, along with Municipal Waste, Exhumed, and Speedwolf. Doors open at 10 PM, admission is $15. Advance tickets can be ordered HERE.