NAPALM DEATH Frontman On Songwriting And Touring

Australia's The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with NAPALM DEATH frontman Mark "Barney" Greenway. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

On the group's songwriting process:

"We try not to be too relaxed when we're writing songs, because we feel that urgency and that on the edge sort of feeling can be helped by not giving ourselves too much time to come up with the material. I wouldn't want that kind of loose vibe that some other bands have. I would think that we would kind of get bored if we had to write an album that way. The momentum would be a little lacking I think. We like that pressure. At times I'll find myself at my computer tapping out lyrics with absolute ease, and other days I can have a complete mental block and find myself screaming the place down. But at the end of the day, that pressure to come up with stuff really works. I don't know why, but it just does. I guess we've just found our little way of making things work for us. This time around, we put ourselves under a little bit of pressure, as we always do, went in there and came up with whatever we came up with. There was no great master plan. We just came up with some songs, and recorded what we felt was good at the time. It was the same deal as always when it comes to making NAPALM DEATH albums. Only this time, I think everything came together perfectly."

On the new album's guest appearance by Anneke Van Giersbergen from Dutch progressive act THE GATHERING:

"Some bands might drag guests in for their album purely for the sake of having that someone sing on their album. But for us, we always do things in context. Jello Biafra (who appeared on 'The Great And The Good') was totally right for that track that he did. In fact, when you listen to the original guide vocal I did before Biafra did his thing, you can tell that he took the track to a whole other place. That's the whole point. If you're going to bring in another guest, they have to compliment the song, or add to the song rather than just sound the same. And for this album, Giersbergen's contributions to both 'Weltschmerz' and 'In Deference' were totally in context. Some people might say it's a bit fucking weird, but it's in context with what the song is actually about. You have to hear the song, because without hearing it, it does sound a little strange having someone like Giersbergen singing on a NAPALM DEATH track. I think both tracks sound very much like CELTIC FROST around the 'Morbid Tales' (1984) era. But then when you think of other bands in the past, like CRASS and CONFLICT, who always added female vocalists, it's not that strange. I always loved that, because it was in complete contrast to what the male vocalists were doing. I think it worked, because they complimented the songs really well. I've read what some people have already posted on some forums, but stuff like that is inevitable! (Laughs) They're saying things like, 'Ah! Operatic metal vocals! What are they doing?' Those people haven't heard that song yet. Once they hear it in context, they'll understand."

On touring:

“We're just about to dive in at the deep end, but it'll be fucking great. I'm dying to get out there and play some more shows. I love touring! (Laughs) Touring very much depends on your own feelings about yourself. Contrary to some romantic visions some have about touring or being in a band, it's a hard fucking slog. It really can be sometimes. You have to be ready to deal with that. Some people just aren't built to tour. When I say that, I don't mean the hedonistic side or the excessive side, because that's not NAPALM DEATH's about anyway. It's hard in the sense that you're away from home, there's no grounding and there's no personal touch about that nomadic life. You're either in a van or sharing a bus with a bunch of people just heading from place to place. You have to be equipped to deal with that. I am now, but I wasn't equipped for that for some time. Now, I'm really positive about life on the road. I like to make a positive out of anything. I'm looking forward to it, because I know that in the live sense, we're honed to a point now where we really fucking go for it. We're finding that we're really enjoying it now. It's great. We're even hoping to tour Australia this time around. It just hasn't worked out in the past, but hopefully that won't be a problem from this point on. We fucking need to be down there. It's been some ten years since we were last down there! (Laughs) We definitely make conscious efforts to make a tour work down there with our other tours (Regions such as Japan and Asia),so hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later."

Read the entire interview at www.themetalforge.com.