Napalm Death is undeniably one of heavy music’s most important and prolific outfits. The band’s legendary debut, Scum, fused the spastic energy of anarcho-punk with the budding intensity of the then-infant death metal genre, ushering in a new era of extremity and technicality. On the might of releases like From Enslavement To Obliteration and Fear Emptiness Despair, Napalm rode the wave they created through the ups and downs of grindcore, death metal, and the music industry itself, retaining their uncompromising heaviness while, on albums like 1996’s Diatribes, showing ample creativity and willingness to experiment and adapt. Napalm’s post-2000 output has been consistently excellent, with the band’s continued evolution highlighted on The Code Is Red… Long Live The Code, Smear Campaign, and their most recent full-length release, 2012’s Utilitarian. With Napalm Death’s next album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, shaping up to be one of the first killer releases of 2015, I recently had a quick chat with longtime singer and lyricist Mark “Barney” Greenway about the state of heavy music, the state of the world, and how a band as legendary as Napalm Death manages to consistently push the envelope without compromising or cooling their heels.

Schuler Benson: “So first, I wanted to ask about the climate surrounding how the new record came together. You’re very prolific, and I think you continue pushing yourselves as musicians. At this point in your career, is there any conscious effort that goes into furthering the Napalm Death sound, things you want to keep or things you’re trying to gain, or have you guys been working together for so long that this evolution’s just a natural part of your chemistry with one another? Bearing that in mind, tell me a little bit about the writing process for Apex Predator – Easy Meat.”

I don’t feel a responsibility to the scene. – Barney Greenway

Barney Greenway: “It’s fairly natural. When we go in to write an album, the process is usually the same now. Shane [Embury] and Mitchell [Harris, Napalm’s bassist and guitarist, respectively] will work out music, bring it to me and we’ll yay or nay, and get on with the lyrics. It’s almost inescapable to think, you know, ‘will people like this as much as the last album?’ But you find once you enter into a recording studio, the songs you’d been contemplating take on a life of their own. And the one good thing about Napalm is that there’s a lot of spontaneity in the studio. What we bring to the studio, there’s always some neat thing that comes out in the studio after we’re there. It’s very organic. It’s been that way for quite a few albums. The actual progression of the music itself [on the new album], I think it’s a little hard right now to say because the album’s so fresh, but I think the mix of more ambience we’ve got, post-punk, kinda weird ambient queasy guitar stuff. Mix that with the traditional Napalm ‘off-the-rails’ thing, these elements have mixed further and further as we’ve gone on. It’s natural.”

SB: “You’ve got a rich track record when it comes to lyrical content. Over the years, Napalm’s taken aim at organized religion, animal cruelty, war atrocity, consumerism, and the pitfalls of big business and the music industry. What are some of the themes you’d say drive the new record? Does the music drive the lyrical themes, or are they on two separate wavelengths?”

BG: “All the themes from the lyrical side, [are separate from] the songs. The music, as good as it is, doesn’t drive the lyrics. The lyrics come from observations, putting ideas on the table. Creative writing. It has a place of its own. It’s funny, because you just read off a list of certain aspects. When you read it, you kinda wince a little bit, you think, you know, ‘Is the stuff I’ve written that generic that it fits into little boxes?’ But at the end of the day, it’s not like that. For this record, a specific event was the catalyst for [the lyrics]. A disaster in Bangladesh when a building full of sweatshops collapsed, which is bad enough in itself, but there was a number of unsavory elements beyond that. A lot of people haven’t heard of it. The media—well, do you know what I’m talking about?”

SB: “Can’t say I do.”

BG: “Right. The media coverage of disasters can go on for some days, and usually does, but this thing in Bangladesh seemed to dissipate quickly. I got the feeling that somehow life was cheaper because of where this happened. Because the building was part of the manufacturing process of what people wear, you know, like there’s this reluctance to confront it. Another thing was the fact that these big companies that had a stake in the place. There was the typical press conference, people looking forlorn and morose, but all these voices like ‘we’re gonna look at things, set up a fund for the injured,’ and I thought well it’s the same ole same ole. Token gestures, but nothing’s gonna change. This is the problem, one of the problems of universal slave labor is that it never changes. These companies turn a blind eye to employment practices, and really, you can’t even call them employment practices. It’s cruelty. It’s slavery. Slavery is still alive and well, and it happens in a lot more subtle and sophisticated ways now. So that was my catalyst.”

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way of playing grindcore. It’s all in the eyes of people who are doing it

SB: “What are some places you find inspiration for what you put into Napalm Death? Books? Films? Philosophy?”

BG: “I try not to lift stuff [directly] out of books and movies. With songs, I’ll make the point and expand upon it myself. I very much have the blank sheet of paper and will write. But if I get a mental block, I may grab a book and read a chapter I know will rev the engines, but then I’ll put it down and carry on with my work. But I don’t plagiarize. What’s written is very much written on my own steam. The most important thing is to write creatively. For me, anyway. Put some humor in there, put some simile and metaphor, double meaning. I love writing to that depth of creativity. Sometimes I’m not 100 percent satisfied, but when I look back over what I do, I’m largely satisfied. If I was to give one book that’s really served me well, it’s a book called Days of War, Nights of Love. Kind of a free thinker’s book. Came out of the punk scene, dissects every piece of life and blows it apart and says, ‘here’s why you’re conforming.’ It breaks everything down, but it’s funny as well, you know? It’s worth a read.”

SB: “Napalm Death’s been an entity through so many changes in music and the music industry. How do you feel about the state of grind and death metal today? Is it still a kind of reactionary response to the world, or has the extremity of the music become sort of an end in and of itself?”

BG: “There are many tentacles to it. As with any genre, there’s some [aspects] I like, some I don’t. With lyrics, I wanna think there are some very good, probing bands out there asking questions. There are some that wanna focus more on fantasy, and that’s fine. I accept it comes in all colors and shapes. I don’t feel a responsibility to the scene though. We understand we’re a part of it, but the scene has to shape itself. There are x thousand other bands out there running in tandem with us. It’s up to each band to shape itself, and for that reason I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way of playing grindcore. It’s all in the eyes of people who are doing it.”

SB: “Awesome. Man, thanks so much. Real quick, what are three albums currently in your listening rotation?”

BG: “I am a music fan, but I haven’t listened to too much new. Well one new one, I guess, the first would be the new Vallenfyre album. Really good. I’d also say an old stalwart for me would be Crass’s Feeding of the 5,000. Absolutely visionary. It split people down the middle. You love it or you hate it, and I think it’s an absolute masterpiece. The lyrical content is so visionary. I still put it on before I’m about to start writing an album. And a third, I’d say Rudimentary Peni, Death Church. Been into that quite a lot lately. I hadn’t listened to it for a long time, and when I did again, it hit just as hard as ever.”

Century Media will release Apex Predator – Easy Meat on January 27, 2015.