The term “legend” tends be thrown around loosely, but when it comes to extreme music, Napalm Death truly deserves that title. They've been crushing skulls since the early '80s, and show no signs of slowing down. They are just as passionate and intense as they have always been, and the British band's latest effort is Utilitarian. I had the pleasure of speaking with the band's vocalist Mark “Barney” Greenway about the new CD.


Chad Bowar: It has been about three years since your last album, which is a little longer than usual. Any particular reason for that?
Barney Greenway: We've been pretty random in that respect. When we did The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code and Smear Campaign, those two were only a year apart. Since we've signed with Century Media, the band has seemed to have been more productive. That also means the possibility to play live in different parts of the world has increased even more than usual.

We thought about recording early last year, with an eye on releasing something at the end of last year. But we had a couple of interesting and unique touring opportunities, so we thought it wouldn't be the end of the world if we delayed it a few more months. Some of the offers to play live don't come around too often, and it's those kind of things that keep things fresh, so we opted to go and play those.

Have you had a pretty consistent songwriting process over the years, or does it vary from album to album?
The process has been the same since I joined the band.

One of the guitarists will write the music, and give it to the other bloke to see if it needs adjusting. I have lyrics, or at least ideas for stuff written down. From there we'll form the complete song. It's been pretty consistent for us.

At what point in the process did you come up with the title and theme for Utilitarian?
Pretty early on. I like to have the album title up front, so I can at least try to make the songs fit around it.

It's a title that seems open to many different interpretations. Is that the way you designed it?
I try to be a bit creative and not too generic. It's easy to populate an album with often used terminology. I try to put a little bit more effort into it. We've got one shot at each album, and have to live with it for the rest of our lives, so I try to make the very best of it. Although the album is called Utilitarian, it's not just a homage to that philosophical concept. It's a little bit more than that.

I don't know whether I am a utilitarian or not, because there are some ways it can mean servitude, but that's probably not the way I would live my life. So rather than paying homage, it's actually me at least drawing the parallel from part of the concept. One of the tenets of the philosophy itself is that good actions make for good consequences. Where I'm drawing that parallel is that in my life, before I do anything I consider the impact that action could have on somebody else down the line.

In that way of living life comes a lot of self-doubt. In any kind of considerate lifestyle you're trying to make a difference. But the human trait is to expect instant results. Human beings are often entirely too impatient. They want to see results right there in front of their face. But in ethical living, the results are not always instant. They are often quite gradual, because it involves challenging certain conventions that take quite some time to break.

That leads you to wonder if the way you are living is too much effort. If you're not making a difference, you tend to lose the sense of what's important. I guess the conclusion is that we should always persevere. That's the general flow of things with the concept. It sounds complex, but if you follow the steps logically, it's actually quite simple.

Did you struggle with song order at all?
That's a good point. I love that question, actually. The song order does cause quite a few debates. People look at Napalm as a solid unit and think things must always be pretty smooth. But the four of us are different people, and we all have different impressions of what Napalm means to us. That comes down to things like song arrangements. We each like a certain flow to our albums, and all our perspectives are slightly different. So that can cause some debates. We don't micro-analyze it, but we all come up with different track lists, and then we'll throw it around a little bit, argue about it a little bit, and then try another track list and see how that feels. It isn't micro management to the nth degree, but we all have our different takes on it.

You've worked with producer Russ Russell for several albums. What is it about his style that fits with the band?
It's his understanding of the band, it's his techniques. He doesn't just go for the conventional, he will go with what works for the band. He will allow us to employ techniques that aren't exactly conventional. If it works, we record it. If it doesn't, we don't. Russ has that sense of spontaneity that we also have. He's not the kind of guy that's going to tell us how to write songs. We don't need that. Of course he'll give us his opinion or critique, and we may re-arrange a part in a song. That's the kind of relationship we have with Russ. He also knows how we record. We need a real spontaneity to the sound. It can't be clean and clipped around the edges or polished. It needs to have a real noisiness to it.

The band was honored recently with a compilation CD where more than 100 bands covered your 2 second song “You Suffer” from the Scum album. What was your response to that?
I thought it was brilliant, absolutely such a good idea. Proper cover albums are very flattering, but they for the most part just pay tribute. But this takes a whole raft of bands of different styles and they are doing their own takes. The bands put their own spin on it. It's a breath of fresh air as covers albums go. It's a great idea all around.

Napalm Death has been a hugely influential band in death metal and grindcore. What is your reaction when a musician cites you as an influence?
It's always very flattering, but you should never believe your own hype. You're only as good as your next gig or your next album. It doesn't matter what you've done in the past. You've got to be consistent in quality. It is nice, but you've got to keep moving forward in different ways.

Who were you surprised to see wearing a Napalm Death t-shirt?
We've seen pop musicians wearing them over the years. The diversity of appreciation is flattering.

How do you spend your time when you're not making music or on tour?
I'm a labor union rep for musicians. That keeps me quite satisfied. I also do a lot of exercising. Doing what Napalm does live, you need to keep in shape. I'm also an independent movie buff. Most of the big budget movies bore me.