By Andrew Bansal
British legends Napalm Death are pioneers in more ways than one, not only musically spawning several generations of grindcore/extreme metal-inspired musicians that came after them, but also carrying a reputation of presenting entertaining concepts and ideas, and taking uncalculated, out-of-the-box steps along their career path. To that effect, Napalm Death are now ready to embark on the ‘Savage Imperial Death March’ North American tour with Melvins and Melt Banana, for what promises to be an intriguing event for fans. Frontman Mark ‘Barney’ Greenway took the time to speak to Metal Assault last Friday March 11th 2016 to discuss this tour, the band’s recent gigs with Faith No More, the latest album ‘Apex Predator – Easy Meat’ and music videos, among other things. Enjoy the conversation below, and catch Napalm Death on the upcoming tour.
Barney, it’s great to have you on Metal Assault. You have an extensive North American run coming up with Melvins. Now, that’s a very interesting combination. First of all, how did that really come about?
Well, it’s something that’s been in the back of our minds for quite sometime. Our bass player Shane had actually suggested it a long time ago, and I just thought it was a great idea. When you think about it, you kind of go, why didn’t we do this fucking years ago? It just seems so obvious to me that we should have done it years ago, but I guess the main underlying thing is, it’s just something different for people. One thing that we are conscious of doing, is trying to give people different experiences. We don’t necessarily want to go out with five bands that all sound the same or have the same approach. Although people might be fans of that style, for anybody it’s a real endurance test, hearing the same very small parameters of style times five in an evening. Melvins and Napalm Death do have some similarities in terms of approach to things in general and the way we operate, but sonically it’s quite different. So, it’ll just be a good thing, lots of different aspects for people in the space of one night. You’ve got Melt Banana as well, the Japanese band, who are pretty quirky in themselves. So it’s just going to be a good sonic experience, I hope (laughs).
You’re right about not having a lineup of entirely similar bands, and I don’t think you’ve been on a tour which is just grindcore or extreme metal bands from start to finish.
Sure, I mean, I haven’t actually thought about it going back through time, but yeah, you’re probably right. I just get the impression that people would get a little bit bored of that. And the last thing we want to do is bore people, you know (laughs).
Talking of weird, out-of-the-box lineups, you did a couple of shows recently with Faith No More. How did that go?
Oh, it was great! That’s a bunch of old friends on a personal level. Again, very different band, very quirky in themselves, but arguably in some respects more able to transcend to the sort of general listening population. They actually asked us personally. It was Billy Gould who asked us one time when he was over in the UK, and we were like, yeah! You know we’ll do it. You don’t need to ask twice! If only we could have done that whole tour, I would have loved to have done that, to be perfectly honest with you, but I think Refused are already doing pretty much everything. They just needed somebody for those first Texas dates.
And I think their fans are probably a little bit more open to things than say a death metal fan or something.
Oh they were, actually. You know, I don’t like to stereotype people but when I looked out in the crowd, I could tell that it was the kind that’s a lot more used to being very diverse with their tastes. May be some of those people listen to a lot more commercial stuff than what Napalm could give them, but I was still surprised and people were so accommodating to us. It kind of blew my mind a little bit, because I thought to myself that some of these people couldn’t possibly be at any point in tune with Napalm for as long as we were on the stage every night (laughs). But no, the reaction was fantastic. Like I said, it would have been great to do the whole run, really, but it wasn’t possible this time around.
Whether it be the Faith No More crowd or anyone you play in front of, specially when you’re not headlining, I think people can appreciate the entertainment value you bring, regardless of the musical tastes and things like that.
Sure, and that’s a good thing because that’s a good vehicle for the ideas behind the band as well. So, when people get a little curious about it they can look a little further at some of the ideas behind the songs and stuff. When you say entertainment, some people probably go, holy shit, I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s so off-the-scale that I actually kind of like it because it is that way. So, you get that as well, and that’s fine. If people don’t want to go any deeper than that, you’ve got to expect that and it’s not a problem.
So, what’s the format for this tour? Are you co-headliners with rotating spots or are you headlining the whole run?
Napalm is closing the show every night, as far as I know. But I don’t think of it in those terms. I’ll be quite happy to go equal billing with the Melvins. I’m quite honored, actually, because I was a Melvins fan. I bought ‘Gluey Porch Treatments’ pretty much the day it came out, at least in the UK. So, I don’t think about those things. For me, if we were flip-flopping every night with the Melvins, it wouldn’t have been a problem.
You’re doing some really cool things on this tour in terms of the venues too, like playing three nights at the Troubadour to end the tour, and right before that you’re doing two nights at Slim’s in San Francisco. Instead of doing one big show in each city, it’s more of an event to do multiple nights. People, and I for one, tend to remember it more when a band does that.
Sure, and it’s all about the intimacy as well. I know a lot of bands say that it’s better to be more intimate and stuff, but it is, actually, specially with a band like Napalm. If we can interact and pull people in more at our eye level, then that definitely works for us. Hopefully it’ll be nights to remember for people, because on any tour you want people to go home and feel that it was actually worth going to the show . They didn’t just see a band going through the motions, and the band did things that made them glad they went out and spent their 15-20 dollars or whatever.
Right, exactly. In terms of the set for this tour, are you still touring in support of the latest album ‘Apex Predator – Easy Meat’? Or will it be more of a roundup of the band’s career?
Well, ‘Apex Predator’ or any album or not, the set lists are always a roundup of things. We’ve got so many albums to call on. We’re not a very calculated band, but the one thing we do like to do is we like to look at our set lists from the last time we were in the States. Yeah sure, there are the new album songs that we’ve got to do that’ll probably cross over from the last time we were there with some songs, but let’s see how much we can flip the set list on its head, and do stuff that we didn’t do last time. We always try and do that. So, we’re running two sets on this tour, and obviously we’ve got three nights in LA, so the last night might have some surprises, and I can’t say any more than that (laughs).
As you said, you have so many albums. When it comes to new material, it’s like you guys really have nothing to prove. That is a good thing, but it might also be a demotivating factor, isn’t it? How do you deal with that?
Yeah, I understand what you’re saying, but you know what, I will say this, Andrew. I never felt that I had anything to prove. The only thing I ever had to prove was in conjunction with the three other members. Speaking generally after we’ve done an album, all we have to prove to ourselves is that this album that we’ve finished and now that we’ve had a few days to listen to it in the studio, we like what we’ve done and it does what it’s meant to do. I’ve never been about this competing with other bands thing, because I actually find it very counterproductive. Primarily concentrate on what you’re doing and make that the best thing, and that should be the only concern. Let other bands do what they do, that’s fine, not a problem, and more power to their elbow. But we concentrate on what we need to do. We draw our influences from where we do, we bring a few things in here and there, we always try and move things forward, but I’ve never once been envious about other bands. I have no interest in that at all.
To keep the ‘Apex Predator’ album in the spotlight, you just premiered a music video for the song ‘Dear Slum Landlord’, which I believe is the third video off of this album alone. These days with metal bands, for the most part videos are pretty generic, to the point where I don’t really even watch them. What do you feel about videos? Do you think it’s still an important tool for promotion, or is it just one of those things done for the sake of it?
Generally, I see Napalm as an art form, and I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant or pretentious when I say that, but it’s about more than the music. So henceforth, if we do make videos or do other such things, I want to make it good. I want to make it right, and like you said, I don’t just want to see another generic video. Of course, everybody has got to make up their minds about Napalm’s videos as much as other bands and everybody is going to have a different opinion of them. But I kind of feel that we’ve absolutely done our best to make things quite artful in many ways, and interesting. Take the new album, there are three videos. The first one, ‘Smash A Single Digit’, was almost a line drawing of a person that was moving from scene to scene. It’s very much a song about labor and exploitation, and so you see the solitary being kind of morphing into various situations. It was actually done by a guy that does actual film. So, I think it was pretty original and definitely not a generic metal video by any metal cliche that you might have seen down the years. The second video for ‘How The Years Condemn’ was a performance video, and people might say, OK, it’s a concert video and I’ve seen it before. I can understand that, but it was mixed in with other stuff. ‘Dear Slum Landlord’ is shot in black and white. It’s kind of a homage to a lot of bands that are on the fringes and more ambient side of Napalm, so it’s shot in that style, very grey, very gloomy, very doomy, if you want to call it that. So, it’s kind of a different side of Napalm. I think our videos are watchable, but everything is subjective. People might tell you different.
As you said, the band is an art form, specially with the lyrical themes and concept behind the band. There is a lot of scope to expand that into other things as well. Do you think about that stuff?
Well, sure, but whatever comes along we’ll look at it, but we did a performance last year where a friend of ours who’s a sculptor built a sculpture and filled it with hot molten clay. It was mic’d up, so it reacted to the sound coming from our amps and cabs, and it actually disintegrated. We did it as a piece of performance art, and that was something different. It was really, really something new to do, and I would definitely like to do stuff like that. When I say ‘art’, I mean literally the whole spectrum of art, not just whether you do comics or this or that. There’s other things to do. I love performance art, I love some of the avant-garde stuff, and I’m really into that. There is no reason why a band can’t do that and can’t project its ideas onto those mediums. I’m saying this now and a lot of people might think it’s a bit pretentious, but everything’s subjective, and if you can do something that’s a different kind of stimulation than just hearing the music through speakers or seeing a video or YouTube, why not?
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Napalm Death North American tour dates with Melvins & Melt Banana:
03.24 Santa Ana, CA – Observatory
03.25 San Diego, CA – Casbah
03.26 Tempe, AZ – The Marquee Theater
03.27 Flagstaff, AZ – The Green Room
03.28 Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theater
03.30 Dallas, TX – Trees
03.31 Austin, TX – The Mohawk
04.01 Houston, TX – Numbers Night Club
04.02 New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jacks
04.03 Birmingham, AL – Iron City
04.04 Pensacola, FL – Vinyl Music Hall
04.05 Tallahassee, FL – The Side Bar
04.07 Ft. Lauderdale, FL – The Culture Room
04.08 Orlando, FL – The Plaza Live Theatre
04.09 Tampa, FL – Orpheum Theatre
04.10 Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade
04.11 Raleigh, NC – King’s Barcade
04.12 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
04.13 Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
04.14 New York, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
04.15 New York, NY – Webster Hall
04.16 Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
04.17 Montreal, QC – Club Soda
04.18 Ottawa, ON – Maverick’s
04.19 Toronto, ON – Opera House
04.20 Detroit, MI – Majestic Theatre
04.21 Cleveland, OH – Agora Ballroom
04.22 Chicago, IL – The Metro
04.23 Milwaukee, WI – The Rave Basement
04.24 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
04.26 Omaha, NE – Waiting Room
04.27 Denver, CO – Ogden Theater
04.29 Salt Lake City, UH – Urban Lounge
04.30 Walla Walla, WA – Main Street Studios
05.01 Seattle, WA – The Showbox
05.02 Vancouver, BC – Venue Nightclub
05.03 Portland, OR – Roseland Theatre
05.04 Eugene, OR – Old Nick’s
05.05 San Francisco, CA – Slim’s
05.06 San Francisco, CA – Slim’s
05.07 Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
05.08 Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
05.09 Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour