The godfathers of grindcore, Napalm Death frontman Mark 'Barney' Greenway is seldom lost for words.
The Birmingham native was in rare form during a recent one-on-one with Metal Injection, diving deep into the groups first new album in five years Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism (out September 18th through Century Media), Napalm's growing and lasting legacy, and more than a few headline-worthy quotes in this candid and cutting interview.
From the drunken origins of his 'Barney' nickname, to the shitty state of the world and how politics bleeds into music, and a touching tribute to Power Trip's late, great frontman Riley Gale, Greenway holds nothing back. Would you expect it any other way?
On the Passing of Power Trip's Riley Gale
Power Trip came out on a European tour with us and did some stuff in the States with us as well. Riley made me feel very humbled on a couple of occasions because, to me, he was like when I first joined Napalm, he was like an excitable young kid. That's how I saw him, even though he's not that much younger than me. He was so excited to be in the position that Power Trip were in. He was just like a young kid, as people should be, excited by their art. He was just a really nice guy. He said to me in a one-on0-one private conversation when you have a little bit of time on tours, I have to tell you that the ideas that you put out there and all the rest of you are like a massive influence on me. One-on-one it's so much more powerful in some respects and I just didn't know what to say. I'm not a person that's usually of few words and I just felt really humbled by him. He was a really nice kid.
I actually saw him not that long ago because I was out in the States with some really dear friends in Austin and my ex-girlfriend's actually from Houston. And so we went to the Power Trip fest (Evil Beat) in Dallas and we decided to make a day of it. I sort of just told him I was going to be there and he sorted me out with four guest passes. I mean, he didn't need to do that, you know? It was just a really nice thing to do. And of course we got together with the whole band. I really love those guys. Obviously nobody really knows at this point what's happened or so it seems, and nobody really needs to know. The fact is that he's passed. And in terms of people that are into music for the reasons that I would consider to be the right reasons, he was one of them, and the rest of the guys in the band as well. I just couldn't believe it … It seemed to be incomprehensible to me. A 34 year old kid … I'm usually really philosophical about these things when people die. Death is death is death to me, you know? In this situation, it's sad. No question.
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On the Origins of His 'Barney' Nickname
Stick the drummer from Doom is a really, really old friend of mine. We go back years and years and years. I've known him longer than most people. So obviously you know Barney Rubble from The Flintstones? In terms of the concepts of like turning things into rubble, i.e. breaking things. Having known Stick since I was as a teenager, being a teenager, I thought I was able to consume copious amounts of alcohol and still get away with functioning normally. Absolutely not the cat you see now. So I managed to not only break other things accidentally, not on purpose, but also broke myself.
There was one particular incident where me and him were running for a bus one night in Birmingham. It was one of those situations where you're in an underpass where it goes underneath like the road, and you go into like a tunnel and it's a pedestrian thing. So we were running for this bus and it was the last bus for the night and we kind of saw it over the top of the tunnel because it was exposed. And so we just started fucking running. We were both drunk as hell, you know? And I unfortunately forgot to negotiate the curve of the tunnel as it curved around. And I just ran full tilt into a wall and completely knocked myself out. I was out on the floor, and consequently we both missed the bus. That was just one particular scene, hence the nickname. Rubble, and therefore Barney, has stuck since then. It's 100 percent true. It's not like mythology or anything like that. It's absolutely true.
On Nearing 40 Years of Napalm Death
People have to tell me and remind me about these loose anniversaries. I always try to be forward looking. In fact, there is a bit of a contradiction with me in this. I do look back at the albums that I wasn't even involved with and I consider everything to be part of the history of Napalm Death. So I'd never minimize the contribution of any of the stuff towards the history of Napalm Death. Some of the stuff that I've played on, perhaps in the early to mid 90s, there is a few things that I'm still a bit, well you know, about. But all that said everything has its place in the history of the band. But that being said the contradiction is I always like to be forward looking. From my own personal perspective I always want Napalm to be moving forward in terms of I don't want to turn into like a legacy band or parody band, that sort of thing where promoters will ask you to play this album from such and such a time. It's like, no, we haven't finished yet. We've got new music and we're confident enough in it to be able to play. So we're always forward looking.
On the Gap Between Records
So in real terms actually, Shane went in to like lay down with Danny the first batch, which is actually half of the songs that we had, in September 2017. So in real terms it's actually three years rather than five years. Even that three years wouldn't have taken five years but for the fact that, of course, we were touring like bastards. We were also respectful of (Russ Russell's) schedule, our producer. So there were times when he could do a couple of days vocals with me, but then he had some other projects on for like a month or month and a half. And so then we'd literally have that gap until we came back in again. And then the other thing was there was some personal stuff that happened to me that I can't go into, but it affected me in terms of my being able to really focus on writing lyrics. I have to have a really ultra focus when I'm writing lyrics. So there was a few things that contributed to the gap really.
I was never too worried about it, you know? Sure, in some ways it kind of goes against the spontaneity of Napalm which has always been the thrust of it. It wasn't as if the record label were jumping up and down saying you must do this album! You must get it done now! In all fairness to them, they never once did that, and even if they did, we'd probably tell them to fuck right off. They're great to us in that respect. They don't make us conform to like, industry schedules. So, yeah, it is what it is. In some ways it's helped coming out now because as you probably know there's quite a few bands that have decided not to release because of the current situation. But we just said, look, we've taken all this time to get this done. We want to put it out and come what may it's out there and it will be out there in a few weeks time.
I mean the way we look at it, we'll put the album out and once the tours start up again, people aren't going to just forget about the record. It still will have been out there and we'll still obviously gear our setlist to do a significant amount of songs from the album. It's not going to change that. To be honest, I don't think there was ever any consideration that we were going to delay any longer. We wanted to put it out. We didn't feel under pressure to put it out. That was our desire to put it out.
On Napalm Death Adapting to COVID-19
I mean to be honest, we've gone the opposite route actually, because Napalm Death for starters, it's not just a metal band. I don't believe we can be categorized in a quite narrow descriptive. We're a lot more than that. Our influences are myriad. For us, Napalm being such a chaotic, spontaneous, vibrant band, certainly in terms of the live experience, we did consider doing like a streaming thing, but it just didn't seem to sit right with the experience that we would give normally. It's not that we'd never say never, but that initial chewing over of the idea, we just kind of agreed amongst ourselves that it just didn't sit right at the time. So we decided not to do it. I think given the fact that Napalm is so out there in "normal times", I think it doesn't hurt for us to go underground a little bit. And I think once we'd come back again, it will give a bit of a lift to people's awareness of the band.
I don't deal with the social media stuff, so I can't necessarily say what's happened in that respect. Shane tends to kind of marshal that a little bit and I sort of do other stuff. So I don't know really. But my attitude towards interviews is whoever wants to speak to Napalm Death, like the smallest to the bigger outlets, will get to speak to Napalm. We don't set any parameters in terms of the size of the publication. If it wasn't for those very small circulation fanzines back in the 80s and 90s Napalm wouldn't have had that sort of connective tissue, if you like, between outlets and the people that follow the band. I'd never want to let those people down because they never let us down.
On Pressure to Stay Heavy
I've absolutely never felt any pressure because I wouldn't allow, or we wouldn't allow, outside people to pressure us, and when I say outside peopel I mean people we might be involved with in record labels and such. If we didn't think something was right we wouldn't do it. Maybe, arguably, in the early 90s we were led down certain paths a little bit. There were some decisions that we made back then that were a little bit sort of not probably the best thing to do. But certainly nowadays we just wouldn't allow that pressure, you know? If anything sounds relentlessly heavy it's because we wanted it, not because we feel pressured to. I wouldn't want to be a part of Napalm Death and have the edges polished off it. That holds no interest to me. I never opted to be a professional musician to go I'll just pick a band and go and join up. No, I wanted to join Napalm Death. I'd have no interest in being in any other band, apart from the Benediction thing I did before and I have no interest in being in any other band.
If another band came to me at that point and ask do you want to join? I'd probably go nah. I've got my apprenticeship, engineering and stuff and I'm not really interested. Thank you kindly for the offer. Napalm was something to me. I mean, I saw the band in the very, very early days as a three piece and I could tell then that this is something special, you know? Sure they are in with a certain sort of group of bands, hardcore with some metal here and there. Above and beyond those kind of classifications, they just had a special something that was one of those special somethings that wasn't easy to explain. You couldn't pin it down very succinctly. Napalm became like one of my favourite bands quite quickly. Napalm is Napalm to me. It's like a phantom limb to me. It's just a part of me. It actually has more meaning than a band to me I would suggest. I've been here for this long.
On the Current Global Socio-Political Climate
The world is always worse in the current climate, whenever that might be. It's never been great. Sure, I'm an optimist, but I also recognize there's a very shitty undercurrent that runs through most of life. I always use this example. So if you'd have been born like just a little over 100 years ago and you were in your teenage years, there's a strong chance if you lived in northern Europe you'd be conscripted to fight in a fucking glorified chess game that killed millions of people, that being World War I. I mean, that was fucking scandalous that whole thing. I'm a pacifist, at least I try to be. I lapse sometimes, but I think pacifism is the way forward. That's why I would say that World War II had a slightly different emphasis, bearing in mind that the dictatorships that were applied there were fairly heinous by comparison to a lot of things. World War I by comparison was a lot more of a chess game between generals and those who had the luxury of sitting in offices and pushing pieces around. Quite futile that whole situation was. My point is, in a roundabout way, that the world's always been fucking shit. It always looks worse in the current climate.
The stuff that I'm talking about has been accentuated in the last few years because the discrimination and dehumanization I talk about has now been adopted by governments. You mentioned the one obvious candidate, but we also have a couple of governments in Europe that purposefully dehumanize people, you know? And the problem is when that happens and it's disseminating into the population, the groups that are being dehumanized, it can lead to first persecution, then to violence and then to extreme violence and sometimes like murder and mass murder.
People say to me, oh, I think you're kind of overplaying it. I know it's a bad situation. I'll just say well, look, you've only got to look at the 1930s by comparison. That's how Hitler started, standing on tables in beer halls in Munich shouting his manifesto at people. And of course at that point a lot of people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. This guy is crazy, you know? But of course, bit by bit by bit, he managed to turn people's heads. When he got into so much of the population the people in general were then sort of driven in the direction of the campaigns against the Jews. From sort of slurs to persecution to mass murder in the space of a couple of years. I mean, these things can happen. They can very quickly develop into uncontrollable situations. People should really think about this stuff very carefully.
On the Inclusivity of Napalm Death
The obvious thing to say is that all are welcome to Napalm Death. If people have the willingness to try and connect with the band, all are welcome. There was always a small cultural thing in music of the harder end of things to be a little bit kind of exclusive. Oh yeah, It's only for people who want to conform to this sort of thing and that sort of thing. All these whimps and posers can stay away. Well, that to me, I know it might sound funny and it does have a comedic aspect to it, but on the serious side of things, I don't exclude anybody. You know, the whole point of music for me, this is one of the last bastions of freedom and equality. When I say equality, I mean the ability to give equal access to all people. So everybody's welcome. Anybody and everybody. It doesn't matter who you are, what you look like, what your skin color is, what your gender is or the fact that you don't identify as any particular gender. All are always welcome.All of the time.
I'm kind of relieved actually in some ways that it does connect to people because the thing is that I don't go into it with a big stick going if people are going to listen to this album, they must consider and agree. Of course not. I mean, that's like dictatorship by a lighter medium. We are a band at the end of the day, so the music is very important. Equally, the ideas and the lyrics are very important. But we put them on the table, give people a chance to chew them over. If they don't agree, I don't have a fucking problem with that. I mean, that's as it should be. If they do agree and they take it on board and they use it in practical ways or however they need to, fucking fantastic. That's where the relief factor comes in. But yeah, I've actually connected in that way. There's another sort of way of approach that just involves people being into the music. They know the lyrics are there and the ideas are there, but they just want to enjoy the music, and you know what I don't have a problem with that. Everybody has free choice to make of it what they will.
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On Chemistry & Longevity
Things just seem to click into place. Of course, whenever you're making an album it's like you do in the back of your mind kind of wonder is this going to be as well-received as the last one? Especially Apex Predator, which went down to fucking stone and like pretty much 100 percent positive feedback. I mean, it's incredible. In some ways it was a tough act to follow, but I think we did. The only thing I would say is that bands, in terms of the makeup of the members, they are a microcosm of the world outside. They are no different from that. Therefore bands are one great big social experiment.
You have days where everything is fantastic and everybody laughs and all the rest of it. You have days where everybody wants to keep to themselves and then you have other days where, unfortunately, things go a bit heated and there's multiple disagreements and all the rest of it. Napalm is no different in that respect. Bands are not for everybody in terms of dealing with that stuff. It can be very fucking tested sometimes. It can be deeply frustrating. But on the other side of things it can be life affirming. It can sort of reiterate to yourself that 99 percent of people will never do what you're doing or be afforded that thing, and that you should never take it for granted and always do your fucking hundred percent best.
