NAPALM DEATH Singer: 'Shame On You If You Voted For GEORGE BUSH'

NAPALM DEATH singer Mark "Barney" Greenway spoke to Abrasive Rock about the U.S. presidential elections and the group's upcoming studio album, among other topics. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Abrasive Rock: So the election results are in, and America has four more years of George Bush.

Barney: "You know what I was thinking? I don't really wish to patronize people, but what would I would say would be just three words, quite simply: Shame on you if you voted for that fucking guy. Do people truly appreciate the potential situation there? This guy is already making definite noises about going into Iraq, for one thing. He's also talking about putting the block on the stem cell research program, which is obviously very important. He's talking further about increasing restriction on abortion for women. Well, there's all manner of things. He's talking of increasing the tax cuts for the wealthy. We could go on, we really could go on. It's very sad, because it affects us in England, as well, it affects us all over the world."

Abrasive Rock: That was actually one of my questions. A lot of the pro-Bush people see you on Blabbermouth, or where ever, and now, of course, Abrasive Rock, having an opinion on this, and they seem to think that if you don't live here, then you don't have a reason for an opinion. And I always though that was kind of absurd. We have an opinion about Tony Blair.

Barney: "It is absurd. Whatever happens outside of these fifty states, it affects us, of course, because we just got dragged into a fucking war. Ninety percent of the population of England didn't want it, you know what I mean? So you mean to say it doesn't affect us? I think it does. And I think it affects the whole world, because I think general opinion outside of these fifty states of George Bush, well, it actually couldn't be any worse, really. And obviously there's good reason for that. And you know what, man, here's the thing, if you talk about this stuff, and you live outside of America, you get labeled as anti-American, which again is completely absurd. I love my friends in America as much as I do anywhere else. It's not their fault. It is the administration in this country. The only fault lies, I think, with people who have got their heads in the sand too much to know what the consequences of this could be. I mean, if you are working class, you know, which is the common area that I come from back in England, if you are working class, or you are struggling to live day to day, and you voted for George Bush, then you really do have to ask yourself a lot of questions."

Abrasive Rock: What can fans expect from "The Code is Red...Long Live the Code", and is that still the running title?

Barney: "It's going to be, in the context of the music, it's going to be a classic NAPALM album, and when I say that, I mean it's going to be fast, furious, even more so than the last album, but still progressive, in terms of the riffage. We've also got a song on there that ends the album, it's something we haven't done for a while. One of our big influences is a band you might remember from New York, called SWANS."

Read Barney's entire interview with Abrasive Rock at this location.