Prior to the release of their hotly anticipated thirteenth studio album ‘Time Waits For No Slave’, Planet Loud caught up with irrepressible and long-serving bassist Shane Embury for a quick chat all things Death.
Planet Loud – You’ve got the new album ‘Time Waits For No Slave’ coming out shortly, so tell us a bit about it.
Napalm Death – Well, what to say? We did an awful lot of touring for our last album, so that’s why this one took a lot longer to get around to. I had some songs already and we used that has a starting point for the direction I guess and it went from there. We recorded with Russ Russell again at Foel Studios and also Russ’s Parlour Studios in Kettering.
Planet Loud – Can you go into some more details regarding the themes tackled on this album – Barney has said how it’s about analyzing life, “why we’re killing ourselves to get ahead and not appreciating the simple things around us”?
Napalm Death – I’ll go through some of favourites so you can get a generally idea of what we were getting at
Strong-Arm: A pro-peace song, about how the idea of violence in any form makes things bleak and shows a lack of understanding for human interaction.
Diktat: Observing how marriage continues to be hi-jacked by the moral police. I’m saying that if marriage breaks down, it’s not the end of the world – it’s natural. And other things like how people try to interfere to stop same-sex marriages, when it is no-one else’s business and, in fact, an assault on human choice.
Work To Rule: Observing how people work to gather money and goods to somehow elevate themselves above others. The title is a actually an old trade union term, used during periods of dispute with management which means to only work to the levels to which you are obliged, but I used it as a play on words.
Time Waits For No Slave: About how we work ourselves into the ground and when we look back at the end of our finite time on earth that we have not appreciated the simple things in life, like the way things just almost effortlessly shift in the world around us. Unless we have an understanding of the simple things, how can we hope to understand the complexities of life?
Downbeat Clique: This is about the scene police – the people who stand at the front of shows and shout about that general ‘sell-out’ stuff (I was re-inspired by a guy in Italy recently who did exactly that to us). They keep themselves in a ‘downbeat clique’ because it somehow gives them a role to play, even though they have little clue about the stuff they are saying. They ask for 5 euro shirts – the kind of shirts that are made by child labour in sweatshops.
Fallacy Dominion: This song I had to re-jig – it’s about how people try to complain about giving better opportunities to the traditionally disadvantaged. I’m saying that people are just bitter because they want everything for themselves and perhaps to retain the misery of imbalance because it puts everything in their favour.
Passive Tense: It’s about getting so pissed off with authority and the moral police – hearing them condemn people and especially the young right now – that you want to lash out. However, balancing that with a desire to not engage in violent acts is a struggle in itself.
Planet Loud – You’ve already played a few tracks live on the mini-tour at the back end of last year, so how did they go down?
Napalm Death – It’s always tough when you first play new songs live, but the general reaction has been good. You get quite nervous at first, and you don’t necessarily play them as fluently as the older tracks, but the reaction was really pleasing.
Planet Loud – How did the decision to play the whole of the new album live at the launch party come about?
Napalm Death – We did it in Germany for ‘The Code Is Red…’ album and it got a cool reaction, so we thought we’d do it again. It’s something that invariably you never get the chance to do and some of the songs we may never play live again so from that point it’s quite nostalgic I think. We probably won’t play it all in one go, maybe break it up a bit with some older tracks, but we’ve still got to decide that.
Planet Loud – You all switched roles on ‘Omnipresent Knife In Your Back’ – how did that come about, and are we likely to see a similar situation live at any point?
Napalm Death – It just happened really, we can all play different instruments and we just thought it would be a fun thing to do. I am not sure if we will play it at the Birmingham show but we may do in the future.
Planet Loud – Being in a better position to answer this than anyone else, what do you put the longevity of Napalm Death down to?
Napalm Death – I guess without trying not to sound cliché, we never gave up when there were times when other bands just split up; even in our experimental years when we tried different things we always very honest about it. We have been through some tough times together and fought with each other like family so perhaps that’s one of the keys.
Planet Loud – You have so many other side projects on the go as well as Napalm Death, do you have any other musical goals left to achieve?
Napalm Death – I have lots of things I still would like to achieve and have been thinking about future projects. As of now I am trying to get a deal for 80’s influenced heavy metal band absolute power – I enjoy making music, it keeps life interesting and vibrant I think.
Interview by Dominic Hemy
