The journey from being a small Grindcore band from the West Midlands to one of the largest extreme metal bands in the UK is a long one. With over three and a half decades under their belt, Napalm Death have forged themselves a place as one of the most respected bands on the scene, both for their hard work and their values. While the band may have been through numerous line-up changes in that time the juggernaut has never slowed its charge throughout the years, and 2015 is no exception. Ghost Cult chats to Napalm Death’s vocalist Mark ‘Barney’ Greenway in the aftermath of their latest album release Apex Predator -Easy Meat (Century Media Records).

The sound may feel like they’re long way from Scum, From Enslavement to Obliteration or Utopia Banished but despite the evolution in sound, the roots of their music remain firm.

“I just think it’s been a natural gradual thing. If you take where we are now to where it was in 1987 before I was part of it or the other guys then it’s actually quite remarkable how close we are to those early albums. People say sometimes ‘how come you don’t make any albums with 20 or 30 half a minute songs’ but if you listened to our albums you could take 3 of those songs and put them into one of ours, so its not really that different its just a question of I guess the duration, although we do still have some really short ones on our albums. We don’t have a checklist before we go into albums, we just write the best that we can at the particular time. I guess because extremity is in our blood musically we’re always going to make something that’s a bit mad. It’s just very natural steps forward. If anything we’ve brought what were fringe elements in the band and have become very forthright now that that kind of very almost non metal non punk side of things, that is bands like Swans, Killing Joke, My Bloody Valentine and Slab, that’s that more ambient side of things has come into the band and with that its given us an extra dimension to the sound.”

The progression over their sixteen album career may have been vast, but they’re not looking back or living in the past.

“I gave up counting probably about 13 albums ago to be honest. When you really think about it you think ‘Oh Bloody Hell,’ but I prefer to let things take their natural course. It is like calendars, if it wasn’t having to remember important things I have to do I wouldn’t bother with one. I just like to live life and let it take its course.”

“It’s interesting because when you go into a studio, certainly for me, I’m quite confident when I’m doing stuff with Napalm. There’s always this thing when I’m making a new album that you kind of think ‘is this stuff good enough? Are people going to like it compared to the last album? Does it have the same thrust? Is it going to leave a similar impression?’, and you do always worry about that. It takes on a life of its own though once it’s in the studio. That extra ambiance, certainly from Napalms experiences that extra spontaneity that we get in the studio. Nothing is ever 100% before you enter the studio doors, there’s always something extra that sits on top of it once you get in and record the bloody thing. I was nervous about it when we did the album but now its done I just think that it is certainly not a radical departure from anything Napalm’s ever done. That’s a good thing, it means were not loosing our extremity or the things that the band is known for, and secondly that we like to do it. So I think its just a couple of steps forward really. I couldn’t break it down into a scientific formula for you, all I can say is that my feeling about it now, although its still quite fresh in the memory obviously is that its just a couple of steps forward. Even though it’s really extreme stuff, it still has the songs, and I think the song writing is getting better and better as we go along, at least to me.”

CAITLIN SMITH