How are you, Shane?
Actually, I’m slightly hung-over, a little bit. I was not going to drink last night but I did because I saw my friends [laughs]. I’m okay, yeah I’m fine.
How was your performance at the Damnation Festival?
It was good. To be honest, 25 minutes in - really really good. Then the way the festival was organised, the people just shot off. It was still a good crowd but you could tell “Oh I’ve got to go and watch the band back [on another stage].”
But you got a good turnout?
Yeah, it was good.
Your new album is called Time Waits for No Slave. What can we expect from this album?
It’s a continuation really. We’re at a point in our career where to me it’s just one thing, it just carries on. We’re comfortable with our style; we’re not going to change. The production’s better. It’s fast, it’s heavy. There [is] probably some more mid-paced stuff but it’s Napalm Death. Somebody else could listen to it and say “I think this. I think that.” It’s really hard to look at your own stuff and go “What’s really different about it?” For me, a couple of the songs I’ve had for a while. A couple of tracks were ready to go after the last album. As I said, it’s just an evolving thing but the production is definitely better, it’s a lot heavier than the last album. From Mitch’s side, there are more mid-paced crunchy, heavy, catchy bits which we usually do. It’s Napalm, what we’ve been doing for years. Best way to describe it.
The title is an interesting one – Time Waits for No Slave. I know Napalm are a political band with the socio-political commentary so what’s the story behind this title?
Well, it was Barney’s title but I think it deals with the fact that we’re all stuck in this 9-5 reality which obviously you can’t get away from. We’re in our late ‘30s, early ‘40s. You need to take the time to look at your life and try to appreciate your life for what it is and enjoy the fact that it’s today. Today is just a day. I could be this, I could be that. You just go with the flow. To be honest with you, go ahead, look into a film, look at the sky or something and just try and appreciate your life. You just get to a point where you’re the age we are now but enjoy the fact that you are alive and everyone has to work, everyone has to strive to their own, I suppose, but they don’t always look at what they’ve got - the simple things like your family or your wife or your girlfriend. Be happy for that.
Do the lyrical themes of this album reflect that?
To some extent, yeah. Pretty much being happy with, again, very simplistic things. It’s so much, basically, the picture that I’ve seen recently now. It’s like that’s not very important. It’s gonna fill a gap for five minutes whereas your wife or your husband or something is gonna be there forever, you know and that’s really important, I think.
Definitely. You’ve obviously been going around for a long time now; is it getting harder for you to come up with new ideas for your music or do you have so many that you can’t wait to record?
I’m always writing for a few other bands besides Napalm. I’m always kinda busy. Strangely enough, a couple of songs off this new album have actually been around for a few years. They weren’t written intentionally for Napalm but I thought “Oh yeah, that sounds really good. We could fit them in.” When you start looking at an album as a whole, you realise these are the fast songs, these are the slow songs and these are the kinda weird songs in the context. But not really, I mean Mitch writes half of the material, he doesn’t really listen to a lot of newer bands. We do what we do. I wouldn’t say it’s easy. I don’t find it hard. I’m really comfortable with what we do.
You said you had some songs that have been around for years. Were these the ones that didn’t quite fit on to Smear Campaign?
No, they’ve been years. I mean, The Code Is Red we did a track called ‘Morale’ and Smear Campaign and ‘Atheist Runt’ which is on the digipak. I think we had about 8 songs from 2003 and from those songs 24 left. I just played it as one. Mark [Barney] said “I like it!” At the time it didn’t seem like the right thing but once we all got together it did. I’m always writing something so you just try and sit there and you use all you can.
Good stuff. You mentioned that you listened to new bands now. Do you actually take influence from these new bands?
There’s a band that me and Mark really listen to called Trap Them and sound-wise they’ve written sort of Nasum rhythms. They’re really interesting. They just give you a kick in the side to pick up the guitar and it’s nice to keep it simple. That is enough to pick up a guitar in my book.
Napalm have been around for a while. Does it still hit you that you’re one of the bands that made grindcore what it is today?
I guess it has been affected by how we’ve been around.
Bands now list you as an influence, bands that are pretty successful themselves.
[I’m] very shy and red-faced!
You were playing punk on the demos and then you went from punk to grindcore. Why did you decide to change your sound?
Actually, I wasn’t there. Obviously it was the guys in the band. ’81 and ’82 it was very popular and it actually went that way. I was more of a metalhead. We’ve played death metal and we’ve got hardcore stuff in and crossover. It’s pretty hard to actually define what we are.
So you don’t see yourself changing to a more death metal sound or something like that?
I mean, there’s death metal there but I think we’re actually at a point where we don’t really think about what we’re doing. We’re very hardcore and we’re very death metal. We’re not worried about it. We’re diverse. I dunno.
You had the old Gathering singer Anneke van Giersbergen on your last album. How did that decision come around?
Basically, we had a very classical intro and we were like we actually need a female vocalist. A friend of mine, he’s the singer of Dew-Scented, recommended her. I think she’s an old school mate.
Barney’s quite outspoken about his political beliefs. Does anyone else in the band share his ideology?
We do but we’re not as outspoken, I don’t think. We all like politics but we don’t usually speak as openly. That’s who he is.
Do you think his views isolate any of your fanbase?
Possibly so but you have to be true to yourself.
What are your plans for the future then?
We’ve got today, two shows in Mexico, Christmas time and then we’re touring the UK next year and touring the States.
So mainly touring in support of the album?
Yup.
Any other comments you’d like to say to the readers?
Erm…no, I think I’m ok.
Thank you so much for your time.
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