Napalm Death
Archived
I had the chance to talk with Shane Embury of Napalm Death. The band has been around since 1981. The band’s recordings over the years have been instrumental in shaping what grindcore music is today. If you’re into heavy music, you know the name Napalm Death.
JF: How’s it going? (Hard-hitting first question.)
SE: Pretty good. It’s raining here in Italy now. We’re on tour here. We have about 7 or 8 days left on this tour, then we’ll take a month off, then head to the States again. We’ve pretty much been on tour since the end of January.
JF: I’m looking at a copy of the tour dates from the last time you were here. You hit California and Arizona, then went straight to Texas. You passed us up here in Utah. Do you think you’ll make it here the second time around?
SE: Maybe. The plan for the 2nd US tour is to play a lot of the places we didn’t get to the first time.
JF: Now that Diatribes has been out for about 3 months, what has the response been like?
SE: It seems to be going down really well. In the States we really didn’t notice until the end of the tour. I guess that’s when the record sunk in a bit more. Over here it’s gone over really well. Germany was cool, England was cool, Holland was cool and Italy’s been surprisingly good. Italy’s one of the countries I like the least. We played a lot of underground shows around here about 7 years ago. They were just weird and unorganized. It just left a lasting impression.
JF: Who are you touring with?
SE: At the Gates. We’ll be returning to the States probably in June with them also. Then we’ll be off to Australia and Japan. We’ll probably be looking to go back into the studio in December.
JF: What do you attribute to the more “listenable” sound that Diatribes seems to have?
SE: Well that’s what we’re into doing. We’re really into the more rhythmic element—stuff that’s catchy but obviously still heavy. We’ve done what we feel can take us to the next level. It’s really up to promoters, agents, and the record label to do their work now. It’s just a natural progression thing. When you sit down and write music, if it comes easily then it just happens. That’s what we do. We know we have to please longtime Napalm fans, but we also have to please ourselves. I think the end product was for the better.
JF: The production seems to be a lot clearer.
SE: In the past, Napalm albums have been a bit more dirty sounding. Usually, people’s opinions of our albums comes down to production. The song writing doesn’t change that much, it’s just the way they’ve been produced differently. People always used to say that Harmony Corruption was such a drastic change, but when you really listen to the songs, the writing isn’t that much different. The new album is very bright.
JF: In the past year we’ve seen bands like Coroner, Carcass and Death break up. These three bands were all in your league, now they’re all dropping off one by one. What do you think is the cause?
SE: I think it comes down to disillusionment. I know the guys in Carcass pretty well. They just got screwed around by a major for so long that I guess they just lost the urge. The major labels have expectations for bands that are often unrealistic. Carcass is going to release their latest on Earache, and there probably won’t even be a band around to promote it.
JF: Napalm was signed to Columbia for Fear, Emptiness, Despair. What happened with that?
SE: Earache licensed that album to Columbia. We didn’t sell enough albums. No surprise really, Columbia didn’t do anything for us. If you’re not going to sell three million, they don’t want to have anything to do with you. It didn’t bother us, though. We were still on Earache in Europe, and we knew the next one would be on Earache in the States. The whole Columbia thing was just a general experience for us. You always wonder if a major label can do more for you, but obviously not.
JF: Are you doing any videos?
SE: We’ve done one for the song “Greed Killing” already. We want to try to release a video with live footage and any videos that we have done. We’ve been filming a lot, so that’s something we might do.
(At this point in the interview, the Italy-to-U.S. phone connection we were speaking on started to go bad. Either that or Shane was sick of talking to me so he finished up the remainder of the interview talking into a coffee cup. “What was that John? I think we’re losing the connection.” Anyway, that’s what is going on with Napalm Death at the moment. They know we will be looking for them to play here in Salt Lake. I’ll keep you posted.) —Forgach
