Napalm Death vocalist Mark “Barney” Greenway has fond memories of underground punk gigs where he could flip through record distros and find treasures lurking within. In that spirit, the band has released a mini-LP called Resentment is Always Seismic – a final throw of Throes. Weird title capitalization aside, the mini-LP (including two covers) are a companion piece to 2020’s mind-imploding album Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism, one of the most stellar heavy albums in recent history.
“When we go into the studio, we flog ourselves to death. We always go in saying, ‘We’re not going to do what we did last time, it’s too much,’ and then our heads just fucking explode.”
True to form, Greenway, bassist Shane Embury, drummer Danny Herrera, and guitarist Mitch Harris came away with not only the bonus tracks for Throes, but the additional eight songs on Resentment. Greenway says the band has been talking about doing a mini album for the past couple years as a throwback to the days of discovering new records at gigs.
“I like the idea of the ‘didn’t see that coming’ aspect of it,” says Greenway. “It’s nice just to put something out this soon after the album.”
Technically outtakes, the eight songs are surprisingly cohesive for what could have been an odds-and-sods release.
“Even though we had the tracks left over, we weren’t going to just throw them at the wall and see how they landed,” says Greenway. “None of them are inferior or have less equality, they just didn’t feel instinctive with Throes’ track listing.”
The mini-LP’s title track, which lands last of the eight songs, was remixed by Embury in his Dark Sky Burial alter-ego and it connects to the death-groove of track two, “Resentment Always Simmers.” On both songs, Greenway looks at how resentment can be a seed for something much more nefarious.
“Resentment is mistrust, paranoia, hatred taken to the nth degree,” he says. “You’ve got to stop and think about this because if you resent people, be prepared for dire consequences. Be prepared for the fact that it can simmer over into persecution, to violence, and even murder.”
The mini-LP also opens space for the band to experiment with the two poles of their sound, the hyperdrive grind/punk and the dirgey industrial skronk. According to Greenway, the band would like to mesh the two styles going forward and the mini-album’s opener Narcissus hints at the convergence. Its distorted, plodding bass intro launches into a mid-tempo lurch by one of Greenway’s patented shrieks before the band sprints into hyper-blast at the halfway mark.
“We hope to integrate the two styles even further in the future because in the past, you could say, ‘This is the traditional, fast grindcore, punk rock, metal, and this the industrial-type songs.’ You can make more interesting things when they’re kind of schizophrenic, in an art sense. With the kind of music that we do, it should have the spontaneity.”
With Seismic as the middle point between Throes and whatever mutations come next, Greenway says he’s excited to hear the new riffs Embury he’s been working on. Embury posted to social media that he’s conjuring up “some heavy as fuck riffing” with “more extreme experimentation.”
“Shane knows there’s two underpinning things for us. First, it’s got to be as abrasive as fuck or it’s not Napalm Death,” he says. “And it’s got to be forward-thinking at the same time. It’s the same elements that have been there since 1981.”
Watch the video for “Contagion” here:
For more from Napalm Death, find them on their official website.
Photo courtesy of Alan Snodgrass
