If you’re looking to escape the troubles of the everyday world, don’t listen to Napalm Death. The British grindcore forefathers have more important things on their minds, namely ripping out the sick, apathetic heart of mainstream culture and waving it in your face so you can smell it. Case in point, the band have just released a new single via an animated music video, and it’s a solid reminder that humanity is the Devil.
The track is called “A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen,” and hails from their upcoming new album Throes in the Jaws of Defeatism. The song is a break from the relentless, concussive blasts that many are used to with this band, instead taking a doom-heavy, drawn-out sound that’s more chilling than pummeling. The video, meanwhile, depicts a boat full of refugees trying to make their way to better lands, only to end up being overtaken by the sea and washed up on shore — where middle-class spring breakers are partying with their backs turned. In classic Napalm fashion, it’s a statement on something very ugly that needs to not be ignored, and it’s communicated beautifully.
“’A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen,’ you could say, is about building and breaking down in the same discordant breath,” says frontman Barney Greenway. “The building came in the sense of many layers of coruscating industrial ambience, all marching to the beat of a home-made drum kit consisting of rubbish bins, oil drums and industrial screw parts and other bits that Shane could find littered around the studio grounds. The scope and gravity and density just demanded a vocal that was as baritone and anguished as I could push out of myself.
“The breaking down side of it was the intention to just focus minds to understand that people who traverse continents, suffocate in confined spaces or drown grasping for assistance are as keen to live in dignity and peace, and without violence and hunger, as the rest of us. As ever, quite simply, we are all human beings and if that means anything anymore, a helping hand is the least we can offer.
“Sam Edwards & Khaled Lowe, directing the video, really focussed our minds in the way they wanted to drill down into the indifference generated around these things – via some incredible animation and suchlike married to the stuttering engines of unseaworthy vessels and the precision shunt of our industrial pounding. The whole visual concept of beach life going on around bodies washed up on the shore is a grotesque scenario that illustrates how meaningless those we can’t connect to our own small universe can become.”
Check out “A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen” below:
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism comes out September 18 via Century Media, and is available for preorder. Check out the tracklisting and cover art below.
1. Fuck the Factoid
2. Backlash Just Because
3. That Curse of Being in Thrall
4. Contagion
5. Joie De Ne Pas Vivre
6. Invigorating Clutch
7. Zero Gravitas Chamber
8. Fluxing of the Muscle
9. Amoral
10. Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism
11. Acting in Gouged Faith
12. A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen
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Words by Chris Krovatin
