Napalm Death is one of the true innovators of grind core music. Here’s the latest on the band from singer Barney Greenway.

METAL HELL: How have the reactions been to SMEAR CAMPAIGN?

BARNEY GREENWAY: The general reaction I’m getting is that people are pretty blown away, even compared to The Code Is Red & that album was really well received. I absolutely love it to bits. I think it’s fantastic.

MH: How long has the band been writing for this one?

BG: Really not that long. The usual process with us is Shane for example has got riffs on tape & Mitch brings his ideas together. It wasn’t really that long. It was probably about 3 months before the album’s recording that we started to pull everything together.

MH: Is that how the process usually works?

BG: Yeah, Shane & Mitch doing riffs & putting ‘em on tape and taking ‘em into rehearsal, arranging ‘em, then getting the beats down & then I will usually take away a 4 track & work on them at home cause I need absolute isolation to write. I need that kind of concentration cause at least from my perspective I don’t wanna write stuff that’s second rate. I need to absolutely focus, I really do. So it’s like that but we deliberately put ourselves under pressure. We will write a whole album sometimes in a month & a half or 2 months. We seem to work better that way. It gives us a real shot in the arm to work like that.

MH: So instead of waiting for inspiration you just go for it.

BG: Well the inspiration’s gotta be there in the first place, that’s why this album’s come out a year and a half after Code, where as in the past we’ve waited a couple of years but we had the inspiration right there & then so we just rolled with it. We said let’s get it done now while we’re firing on all cylinders.

MH: What inspired the lyrics?

BG: The theme is religion. There are many albums out there that have tackled religion but I wanted to go little deeper than usual.

  I wanted to examine  the things where religion permeates our lives even though we might not know it or even wish to accept it & it’s about morality basically. That’s what underpins the whole album. Morality is a concept that was invented by the religious (people) hundreds of thousands of years ago. It was a form of population control, because if they could make you believe that by not conforming to the word of god you would be either excommunicated or banished or tortured & killed. That was a great form of population control & that has survived to this present day. Morality is the word of god making moral judgments, & conforming to that sort of thing. It’s very much still in the front of people’s minds. Even people who are more free thinking, even they get caught up in this great big moral (idea). What I’m saying is why should we accept morality & moral judgments? It’s a set of beliefs that was formulated from religion, which is complete myth anyway. It’s un-substantiated wondrous stories. That’s what it is. So if there’s any hope of getting towards a harmonious peaceful existence, how is anything like that, that’s based on mythology ever gonna be able to help us? I think that if we’re gonna improve our situation as individuals & please ourselves, then we have to look to ourselves & make our own decisions for ourselves. Because we are human beings that have evolved, we are very complex pieces of machinery & the mere notion that we cannot trust in ourselves to make our own decisions is ludicrous to me, especially not making them in favor of something that’s based on pure conjecture and un-substantiated myth, that’s just ludicrous.

MH: And a lot of people use religion as a crutch.

BG: They do, because a lot of people are afraid. It’s a lot of methods of control. it’s fear of paranoia. The fear isn’t so much that we could get tortured for being in there, where it’s heretical or blasphemous or whatever, although in some counties that does happen. It isn’t so much that, it’s just the fear of being ostracized by the rest of society, that if you don’t conform to morality or if you don’t make the effort to make moral judgments against other people then you’re somehow less relevant of a person, well to put it bluntly, fuck off, you know! We create more problems and more tension by having these morals because what it’s essentially saying is that this person or that group of people over there are less relevant because they’re not morally sound or whatever, it’s just nonsense.

MH: And it starts all these wars.

BG: Exactly, there’s the tension part of it, that’s what is causing problems. Again, I don’t wish attack people themselves, but the way Christianity & other religions wind themselves around people’s minds, you get these people that might look at me & a band like Napalm Death & make a moral judgment upon me that I’m this (evil) person or I’m a lower level than them intellectually because I do what I do and they perceive me to be some sort of monster or a threat to their cozy little religions or whatever, then clearly there is an issue of a superiority complex there, or something.

MH: There could be somebody who never heard of religion. Are they gonna go to hell?

BG: Yeah, exactly, and why should you be subject to those moral judgments? Because if you don’t play the game, then you don’t reap the harvest, so if you don’t commit yourself to it then why should you be subject to its rules and regulations? You shouldn’t. Apparently god said I am the voice of man & I represent those even who wish not to, sorry but again that wondrous story part of it, don’t involve me in it because I’m not interested in what a theoretical figure can do for me or how he thinks he represents me. I’m not interested, I don’t believe in it so I’m not going to throw my hat in with something that I absolutely do not believe in.

MH: Do you find any people that are surprised at how anti war you guys are?

BG: What I can’t understand is why people would think that, because if people say ‘a band like Napalm Death,’ well how do they characterize a band like Napalm Death? Again it’s about conformity. You’re conforming to a stereotype. I am a free thinker, I just happen to be in a band. I am in a band that since day one has been about peace, tolerance and equality, those are the main things with us. It surprises me that people should be surprised that we’re like that, would be my very simple response.

MH: With music are you attracted to bands with lyrics that have something to say?

BG: It’s a wide spectrum really. I’m into bands that are purely there for entertainment, that don’t have a message cause I’m a music fan as well, but if you can express your thoughts constructively then why not? I like all sorts of stuff, I like things like Bad Religion, that’s got a very studious professorial message but then again I can listen to Ace Of Spades by Motorhead, which has absolutely no philosophical view on life.

MH: Napalm has stayed true to your sound for 2 decades. Have you ever been tempted to experiment more?

BG: Well if you look at Napalm albums a little closer, there is experimentation on there. Even if it’s not immediately apparent, if you listen to the way the guitars are played & some of the drums, it is experimental, whilst not losing sight of the cool elements of the band. There’s not many bands at this point in their life span where you can trace back to their 1st album & draw parallels, but you can with Napalm I think & I think that’s a good thing. No 2 albums sound the same. There’s always different aspects & different elements & it makes for nice rounded albums.

MH: You can hear some of those elements on the covers albums you guys did.

BG: Yeah absolutely. The whole object of that exercise was to expose people to some bands that would never be heard because they were from an era where there was no such thing as more than 1 record label that wanted to put out that stuff. There was no such thing as recording budgets to speak of. There were many bands doing things out of their bedroom & coming up with some of the most amazing memorable music that I will ever experience in my lifetime, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

MH: Thrash from the 80’s still sounds more fresh than most of the newer bands now.

BG: Absolutely. That depends on your point of view. For me personally, that mid to late 80’s era, in terms of hardcore & extreme music, it can’t be bettered. That’s my opinion, but I haven’t heard anything that’s bettered it for pure vitality & urgency & music that sounds really alive. I have yet to hear any bands that have had that same effect on me since. If you ask someone else they’re gonna tell you something entirely different. I guess it all comes down to opinion.

MH: There’s no individuality now. Back then when you heard Kreator & Destruction you knew who it was.

BG: Yeah, things like that shone through & also bands like Raw Power & Discharge & all those bands were genuinely amazing bands, can you really apply that to so many bands in the extreme scene these days? I would say possibly not.

MH: Napalm took thrash to a more raw direction. Was that the intention back then?

BG: It maybe developed a little differently to that. In the beginning Napalm was just a straight up punk band from (the) whole crass thing & then later on it picked up the metal influences & ran with it. There were all kinds of transformations going on in the lifespan of the band.

Whatever influences we took on board, we always tried to take ‘em to the Nth degree, to see how far we could stretch them. That was a challenge & that’s what makes this music fun, what you can do with it & there are many things that you can (do). So that was the whole crux of it.

MH: Is that the main goal at this point, to keep it fun and maintain what your integrity at the same time?

BG: Well, there are a number of goals, but certainly in terms of the longevity of the band, to keep making challenging albums, to make it fun for our-selves and to make it interesting. The day we get bored with it is the day when we’ll stop. If I wasn’t into it I wouldn’t do it, I couldn’t do something & only be half into it. I’d rather not do it if that were the case.

MH: Bands who do that usually don’t last either.

BG: No, and they find themselves getting stuck in a rut & they don’t feel that they’re entirely creative & they maybe feel that they’re making the same album over & over. You can understand that they might get bored of the whole thing.

MH: Do you ever listen to your old records for inspiration?

BG: No, that is one thing that we definitely don’t do. There is no great master plan when we do an album. At the time whatever comes out of us is whatever comes out of us & of course we know & we don’t have to go back to the albums. It’s always in us, in our hearts, what works for us & we come up with stuff & whatever comes out comes out & I know that might sound like a very simplistic way of putting things when you look at the last few Napalm album and how they’ve had a real sense of urgency to ‘em & what’s still being quite left field in some instances. That said it’s still a very spontaneous & simple process for us when we’re getting the music together.

MH: Have any newer bands revitalized your creativity?

BG: I’m being totally honest here, we hear different bands all the time. Is there anyone that’s directly influenced me in the last few years? Probably not, I still listen to the old bands really, the Motorhead, Discharge, The Seige, Repultion, & what we do is we take that and we twist it into different ways to give it a Napalm twist or whatever. There are certain bands that crop up that occasionally make you go that band is fucking great! There’s one band that I really like at the moment that I’ve been banging on about for the last couple of years, a band called Das Oath, they’re a Dutch/American band I think. They’re a really fast hardcore band but they’ve got  textures to their music & they’ve got quite an influence by stuff like Killing Joke as well. So there are a lot of textures going on & their album production is fucking fantastic. Definitely a band I’d recommend to people if they could get a hold of their CD’s. They go under Das-Oath, or The Oath, Das being the prefix in German, like Das or De.

Especially the last album, which is self titled, it’s a fucking fantastic album.

MH: In the 90’s Napalm Death released lots of LP’s & EP’s, why made the band crank out music so fast back then?

BG: Again, going back to saying there’s no great master plan, of course there’s a limit of time and we go fuck me we’ve been hanging about a little bit too long & we really should make an album, but that doesn’t rarely happen with Napalm. We’re always so enthused & we’ve got such a good feeling because not only are we making good albums in our opinion. But we haven’t got the nightmares of dealing with Earache. We don’t have to worry about that stuff. The support network around us is a lot better these days, infinitely so. Once you’ve got those pressures taken away from you, you can be a little more creative.

MH: Does the long time fan dedication ever surprise you?

BG: It does surprise me that some people still show up 18 years from when they first started coming to see us, or even longer in some cases. Of course who couldn’t be quite humbled by that? We play every gig like it’s our last when we go out on the road but the extra push is always given to you by people that just show up & have been coming to every gig you’ve ever done. There’s a couple of guys, there’s one particular from the New York area that has been there since the start & he will drive like 1,000 miles to come see us. He wouldn’t even think twice about it. You’ve got to feel humbled by something like that.

MH: Are there bands that you’re still a fan of like that?

BG: I don’t go to those levels probably for the fact that I’m so bloody busy with Napalm. Napalm’s not just what people see on the road or hear on record. I put in an average of 10 hours a day doing Napalm stuff at home behind the scenes & it’s a lot of work so I don’t have much time for myself. I don’t wish to sound melodramatic when I say this but I’ve committed my life to Napalm, it’s a 365 day a year thing for me. So I don’t have much time to check out much other stuff. But Motorhead is my band. When I grew up that was the first extreme music for me & from a fans point of view they don’t have the same effect as what they did when they were the classic 3-piece. I still like ‘em & I see ‘em when I’m around. I wouldn’t travel hundreds of miles to see ‘em or whatever.

MH: It hasn’t been the same since Fast Eddie & Phil left.

BG: No, it’s not been quite the same. They try their best & full credit to Lemmy but it doesn’t have the same vibe to me. There’s not that manic looseness to the band with Fast Eddie & Philthy on drums. It was like a punk band then. It was off the rails at some points.

MH: Everything up to IRON FIST was a total classic.

BG: I couldn’t agree more. Another Perfect Day was as well. I love that album. I think Another Perfect Day is much over-looked, after that perhaps not so much.

MH: “One Track Mind” is one of my favorite songs by them.

BG: “One Track Mind” & “Dancing On Your Grave” are great songs..

MH: Do you find younger fans still discovering Napalm?

BG: Yes & no, we’ll do some gigs where there will be loads of young kids & the next time it’ll be a lot of older kids again & less young kids. I don’t think there’s any pattern to it. I think it just is as it is basically.

MH: Do you think grind-core has been taken to the limit or can it still progress further?

BG: I think that’s an un-answerable question. Until someone does it, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to tell. In terms of drumming, which is the backbone of the band, Danny, & other drummers as well, they have pushed themselves as fast as they can be I think. Can you go beyond that? Are we then stretching the limits of human endurance? It’s hard to say until someone does it. There could be some complete super man out there, or super woman, that comes in & completely kills everyone. Maybe a bit more left field elements or something. There’s never gonna be a limit on interpretations of extremity until someone actually does it. Because who would’ve thought that a band like Napalm would ever start playing as fast as it did, no one basically.

MH: Have you ever considered doing a box set?

BG: Yeah, we’ve actually talked about it, cause it’s the 25th anniversary of Napalm this year. We didn’t wanna over-cheese it by the 25th anniversary thing. We did wanna do something but we were so busy getting the new album together that we never got a definitive idea of what we’re gonna do, but that’s a very good point. At some point we may (do it). Whether it’s gonna be a box set or a double disc album of the best of, with loads of tracks from the vaults that no one has ever heard because I know for a fact there are Napalm tracks from my era & from Lee’s era that people have never heard. Think of that, perhaps something approaching an album’s worth of completely unique material that no one’s ever heard.

MH: Lastly, any messages for your fans & the readers of Metal Hell?

BG: Well Joe, just as you were saying really, they’ve stuck up for us & they give us that extra incentive & they give us that extra push some nights when we’re out on the road and we might feel a bit under the weather, a bit tired or whatever, they give us an extra urge to push on & do the best that we can. We appreciate it man. People should never think that we take it for granted cause certainly from a Napalm Death perspective, we don’t. We totally appreciate it.