Napalm
Death
Metal Mania Festival
Katowice, Poland
March 26, 2005
interview and photos by Lyza McEntire
(yeah, i know, the editatrix needs
to be slapped for being so slow with this one!!!)
LINKS:
Hailing from Europe, Metal Mania Fest was heavy and refreshing. New bands, some strange but very good, and then a few veteran bands that couldn’t possibly ever fade from the industry, like Napalm Death. They went on third to last. And with 25 hours of continuous metal music, meeting all sorts of people, and taking loads of pictures… it was worth every second. I had a chance to catch up with Shane and Barney (Mark Greenway). They have a lot to say and give new meaning to interviews. Thanks guys ! And thanks to the promoters, Metal Mind Productions and Asia for making this event happen.
LYZA MCENTIRE: How is it that you are here today in Katowice?
MARK GREENWAY: We got offered this festival late last year. And it wasn’t complicated to say yes. It was very simple. I think, Katowice, we played a very long time ago. It was in that time…I think Napalm Death was one of the first bands to come to Poland. And Katowice was one of our gigs on that tour. It was nuts. Absolutely nuts. Yeah, fantastic. And you know, people always talk about differences. You can play concerts now pretty much anywhere in the world. It’s not like when we got that tour back in ‘89... you’ve got Europe, America…maybe South America. Now you can go anywhere. So kids are a lot more used to getting bands. So you know, everywhere tends to be the same now… and I mean that in a positive way…it’s good. There’s no real differences between the crowds and the reactions from them anymore you know. So we know that we can come here and play. And it’s all good.
LM: Do you feel you are still the Godfathers of Grindcore?
MG: It’s a term that is used. It’s nice ofcourse.
It’s flattering. All we do is do our best and stay faithful to what
Napalm does best. And also make it interesting by doing some new things
that don’t take it too far away from what makes Napalm …Napalm…
you know?
LM: Like guest vocals on the new album. This is something
new.
MG: At first, I think it’s probably fair to say,
we didn’t have any plans for any guests at all. The record company
sort of made a point that maybe it would be good to think about something
like this. It can be a bit of a problem sometimes because obviously you
are focusing on writing music. That’s what we try to focus on. And
concentrating on your own vocals as opposed to any other people coming
in to sing. But once we thought about it and got a few names, we seemed
to get a better idea of what it‘s all about. It came to us pretty
easily. It was a nice change. And it wasn’t like “Ok, you’ve
got these people in just for the sake of having people in and just throwing
them on the song of the track”. It wasn’t like that at all.
It doesn’t sound like that. Every voice, every extra voice sound
congregates with that song, and it’s natural. So, you know…
LM: Tell me about Mike Patton’s involvement with
Napalm.
MG: Buzz from the Melvins, the guitar player, when we
recorded the record two years ago, we didn’t know where we were
going to release the record two years ago. And Buzz suggested that Mike’s
label would be interested. I didn’t think they would because this
album is more of a punk album. Mike’s really into the bands that
influence the record. I’ve known Mike for a long time as well, and
he also was in Fantomas, a previous band I was in… so it’s
more like a whole friendship thing going on. It’s a great label
to be on. It’s good--a three page contract, one album deal. If we
carry on with them, that’s fine, too--not complicated.
LM: Talk about the personal side of Napalm.
MG: The whole point is you know…the one thing that
people have to be curious about, in this general scene sometimes, is that
they expect you to be aggressive, insane, angry …AURGH !….all
the time. And I’m like “Yeah…exactly” And we’ve
never been that way. Napalm was never that way. I mean, it sounds almost
like a cliché these days. We’re just regular people you know.
We get up in the morning, work hard for the band. We try to get things
going. We believe, especially without giving our experiences in the general
music scene, industry, whatever you want to call it, we believe in being
quite aware of what’s going on around us that affects Napalm Death
and we will work hard to make sure we don’t encounter any problems.
So yeah, you know, we’re just regular people who come from regular
backgrounds, regular working backgrounds. We just do what we’ve
got to do to survive you know, to make Napalm the best that it can be,
to make the best out of situations that we’re involved in, and just
try to be reasonable people. That’s all we could ever be. Like in
the older days. And it’s the same today, laugh and joke like everybody
else. As Napalm Death, people think that we are really serious. But we’re
the exact opposite. The music, the lyrics, you can be serious, but there
also comes a time when you have to be able to stand back and laugh at
situations … at yourself . If you can laugh at yourself , I think
it can make life easier. Life can be tough. There are a lot of people
who have it worse than us. Much bloody worse. Many have it better than
us. So, the way I’m trying to approach life is just trying to be
positive as much as I can, really push forward in a positive way, you
know?
LM: Anything other than the band for you ?
MG: Napalm Death is enough for me. Good things have come
to Napalm Death, and we’ve proved it along down the years. If Napalm
Death would be no longer, I’ll never join another band that has
had as much influence as Napalm Death. I could never top that, you know?
But I do other things. At home I do some volunteer work, you know, like
help people with whatever. I do work for a musicians union, which is a
trade union based out of Birmingham, to help improve working conditions
for musicians in general. So that has given me a lot of experience. There
are many things I could do after Napalm Death. There’s one thing
that I’ve said to myself over the last few years is “when
I do go to work for something after this, it won’t be working for
some guy in a suit making money off of people to help people.” I’m
just not interested in making money from people who just don’t care.
I would rather help people less fortunate than myself if you like.
LM: Will Jesse return to Napalm?
MG: Obviously, Jessie is not part of the band right now,
although as of right now, we haven’t made any official statement.
Jesse was with us up until a short time before we started thinking of
writing this album. And I think it’s been fairly well documented
that Jesse is having problems. As the kind of people that we are, we tried
to help him along the way, but there comes a point where we sort of expected
him to help himself a little bit more than what he did. I mean, there
is only so much you can do for him. So we had to make a clear decision.
Enough is enough. We needed to press on and do what needed to be done.
If you don’t help yourself, then you’re going to actually
stop the process from moving along, so you just need to do what you’ve
got to do. And that is how we left it.
The new album, Jesse is not on it. Even though Jesse was in the band, he didn’t play on the Leaders Not Followers album, and on the album before that he did barley anything at all. So, you could say that a part of him hasn’t been a part of the band for a long time. He’s been away since the Order of the Leech album. He didn’t play on that one. As soon as it was released, we did a three week european tour to promote that album, and we did four weeks in the United States, which, he was part of the tour, but he’s had his own “agenda” now for a few years. He just …goes off and …does things. He needs to find out what’s going to make him happy.
It’s really hard being
in a band--in any band--because you try to write songs and push forward.
He didn’t like to be pushed. Jesse has been a friend of ours for
15 years. The expression “You have to be cruel to be kind”..
that expression basically means, he needs to go out and spend time with
his family and work on what’s going to make him happy, 'cause that’s
what is good for him. In my opinion, it’s not good for him to be
in a band. Especially when you are not being productive. You can do whatever
you want, but you must be there to play music and to write songs. That’s
what you do. If you’re not doing that, then the rest just doesn’t
make any sense. Jessie, and this is obviously based on my opinion, he
needs to sort out the underlined problems before he can move on and be
productive. Until he does that, he just won’t get anywhere. We don’t
want to come across like we’re putting the guy down, because we
are not. At some point, when you are in a band, you have a situation,
you kind of want to get away. And he felt this way. I hope he gets this
all sorted out.
The beauty of Napalm Death is democracy and that’s part of the reason why Jesse couldn’t exist. There are some bands, grant me, where one guy may be the whole essence of the band. In that enviornment Jesse would probably thrive, because he wouldn’t have any pressure. But in Napalm, each person has got to bring something to the table to make the band as a whole work. So, in terms of writing, the age old method, I’m sure, of working is, each person has got their own ideas, and in some cases, complete songs. Shane probably does his the most complete. He shows up at the studio with complete songs. Mitch will do the same. We’ll rehearse them. Then I’ll take them home. And I've got my ideas, and then like, I’ll sit there in my room for days, you know, just writing and writing lyrics onto the computer. And that’s it. It’s very simple.
I mean, there will be a few songs, like towards the end, that will have some new ideas. Sometimes the best songs will come together in ten minutes. And some songs, you could be there for like, six months, and going…"man it’s just not working right." And then you come home fucking drunk one night and it suddenly all comes together. There’s a lot to be said about spontaneity. It all works out. To me, like for the first eight tracks, I can easily write lyrics. And for the last 3 tracks I could be sitting there for three hours with a complete blank. And I’m going, “Ah man, I just can’t think.” And then I might just go, “Right, that’s it. It’s not going to work.” And then come back tomorrow, and go, you know… "it’s all good." I’ve got great lyrics that I think of throughout the year, you know. I’ll wake up in the morning and go “Oh wow!“ I’ll go write exactly what I’ve got in my head on the computer . And then I’ll come back to it later, 'cause even though I have the lyrics, I couldn’t actually write a complete set of lyrics without the music, because I need to know the general way the song goes, you know, where I should put this and when should I do that. And think about the other tracks that have already been written and what I could do to make it different.
LM: Do you have a special set to play tonight?
MG: We’re doing the same set we did in Russia.
A collection of something from pretty much every era. A couple of new
songs and a couple of covers.
LM: Time’s up for us… Thank you for the
honorable moment!
MG: We’ll see you next time around!
