NAPALM DEATH: 'Apex Predator - Easy Meat' Artwork, Track Listing Revealed

British/American grindcore legends NAPALM DEATH will release their 15th studio album, "Apex Predator - Easy Meat", on January 27, 2015 (one day earlier internationally) via Century Media Records. The CD's striking artwork, which can be seen below, was created by Danish designer Frode Sylthe (Friktion.com),who has previously worked on the band's "Utilitarian" album as well as with such other acts as AT THE GATES, TOTALT JÄVLA MÖRKER, THE HAUNTED and BURST.

Comments NAPALM DEATH bassist Shane Embury: "There are many meanings that you could grab from the new album artwork, I think. But one is the representation of how our natural and most basic needs for happiness and communication are being stripped away by materialism and pre-packaged garbage — crap that we don't need, filtered to us through the media via the megacorporations with the goal to maintain the bloated bottom line of profit. It's all just stuff that will be obsolete in six months time. And behind the scenes, of course, modern-day slavery is alive, well and obscured by this facade. It's all an exercise in deceit to shower us with fake fulfilment, while the poor and underprivileged fall further by the wayside."

Adds NAPALM DEATH singer Mark "Barney" Greenway: "Across the albums, we have had some very complex and interconnected artwork. This time we wanted to keep it more simple — strip it down perhaps to a single image that would sharpen the focus.

"I loved the idea of the supermarket-style packaging as soon as I saw it, as when you go into one of those places with nourishment in mind and you're greeted with some miserable, artificially enhanced foodstuff contained in a bleak little receptacle of industrial plastics, it doesn't exactly inspire you. To then fill that plastic tray with the dregs of meat production, well, that is the 'easy meat' in the title — representing the people who suffer for burgeoning consumption degraded and dumped in the most pitiful way."

"Apex Predator - Easy Meat" track listing:

01. Apex Predator - Easy Meat
02. Smash A Single Digit
03. Metaphorically Screw You
04. How The Years Condemn
05. Stubborn Stains
06. Timeless Flogging
07. Dear Slum Landlord…
08. Cesspits
09. Bloodless Coup
10. Beyond The Pale
11. Stunt Your Growth
12. Hierarchies
13. One-Eyed
14. Adversarial / Copulating Snakes

"Cesspits" can be streamed using the SoundCloud widget below.

Said Greenway: "'Cesspits' is both literally and figuratively about people living in holes. It is perhaps one of the ultimate indignities and one of those things that a blind eye is often turned to. The subject matter called for a very savage delivery, and although there are quite a few musical facets to this song, it doesn't stop letting rip."

NAPALM DEATH guitarist Mitch Harris will sit out the band's upcoming shows due to illness within his family. The band states: "We stress that this is not a permanent arrangement, although we are unsure exactly when Mitch will return under the circumstances. Naturally, we sympathize and wish Mitch all the best for now. In the meantime, we will be joined by guitarists who we know can grind it out in his absence."

NAPALM DEATH and VOIVOD will join forces for a North American tour, aptly dubbed "Through Space And Grind", in January/February.

NAPALM DEATH will appear at the 2015 edition of the 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise in the Caribbean (Florida / Jamaica) from January 22 to January 26, alongside bands like ARCH ENEMY, BEHEMOTH, BLIND GUARDIAN, CANNIBAL CORPSE, MUNICIPAL WASTE and many more.