Napalm Death Is Still the Loudest, Fastest Band Doing It After Forty Years

Mark “Barney” Greenway is a man of uncompromising conviction.

The wiry 55-year-old is well-versed in the world's sociopolitical happenings and looks to history as an indicator of what must be done to prevent its repetition. “It seems like an exceptional time right now, but if you think back, there’s always been one thing going on that’s set out to basically diminish the human race,” he says. “It’s your responsibility as a human being to put ideas on the table. Then hopefully things that can get acted upon do get acted upon.”

Greenway is no stranger to speaking up about what he believes in. As he sees it, silence is deafening. Whether he’s telling Nazi punks to fuck off or supporting animal rights, when Greenway voices his opinions and opposition, he does so from his pulpit as the longtime frontman of grindcore gorefathers Napalm Death. That means it’s always ear-shattering loud and breakneck fast.

That’s become Napalm Death’s calling card in the forty-plus years since the speed-obsessed British band invented an unheard-of style of extreme music by blending the raw emotion and politics of anarcho hardcore punk with the skull-crushing ferocity and brutality of the burgeoning death-metal scene at the time. Throughout the 1980s, the group, which welcomed a rotating cast of influential musicians — most notably guitarist Bill Steer and vocalist Lee Dorian, who eventually left Napalm to form Carcass and Cathedral, respectively — laid the blueprint for a newly christened subgenre called grindcore, a maelstrom of metallic bedlam, and had something to say.

Greenway, who joined the deaf dealers in 1989, wouldn’t have it any other way. “From time to time, people will say it’s not meant to be a vehicle for that sort of stuff. Well, why shouldn’t it be? Music is surely the ultimate carrier of ideas, like any art is,” he explains. “I don’t quite get that, that you should put up and shut up.”
Scum, Napalm’s 1987 debut, is still considered a masterclass in grindcore. Featuring the work of Dorian, Steer, guitarist-vocalist Justin Broadrick and drummer Mick Harris, the album mercilessly steamrolls through 28 songs, including the fastest track ever: the record-holding, one-second “You Suffer.” The incorporation of blastbeasts, a game-changing technique first introduced by Harris, helped Scum chart on the UK indie list...at No. 4.

Napalm Death had arrived, and by the time Greenway came on board after a brief stint with Birmingham death-metallers Benediction, it was firmly at the top of the underground. Spastic offerings Harmony Corruption (1990) and Utopia Banished (1992), pushed Napalm further into pop-culture, as Jim Carrey shouted out the crew in a 1994 interview on The Arsenio Hall Show. In the 1996 movie Matilda, the title character’s ignorant older brother also sports a Napalm Death shirt at one point. But it’s the group’s 1993 cover of Dead Kennedys classic “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” that cemented Napalm Death as a power player not to be messed with. It’s still a setlist staple to this day.

“It’s really interesting that politicians of that ilk are now kind of emboldened to use this stuff," Greenway says, referencing the current white-supremecy threat, "whereas a few years ago, arguably, they wouldn’t have. I’m worried in some respects. But we just have to deal with it as we go along, there’s no other way to go about it.

“The way to do it is to never shy away from presenting a humane perspective. Why would you, as a human being? You have as much right to be on this earth with your ideas as anybody else, so never be afraid to broach that stuff.”

Lucky for us, we exist at the same time as Napalm Death, and the cacophonous quartet currently consisting of Greenway, longtime bassist Shane Embry, veteran guitarist Mitch Harris, mainstay drummer Danny Herrera, and most recent guitarist John Cooke is not letting up anytime soon. Napalm is on a co-headlining trek with Melvins. The two-headed tour stops in Denver on Tuesday, May 27, at the Summit. Hard-Ons and Embury’s Dark Sky Burial are also on the bill.

If you haven’t seen Napalm Death, bring earplugs, for obvious reasons, and keep your head on a swivel, as the crowd typically gets stirred up early and often. Greenway is as fiery as ever, too, and takes time to call out the bullshit that he sees in the news between bangers. “That’s how I feel, how we feel, the band should be represented. It’s probably always going to be that way,” he says.

“If I can’t physically do it or I’m not excited about doing it anymore, then what’s the point? Would I want to give people a fifty-percent version of Napalm?” he continues. “Absolutely fucking not would I ever want to do that.”

Greenway even broke his ankle on stage while on tour in 2023 and did not miss a beat. He continued performing and played ensuing shows seated, with the ailing appendage in a cast and elevated. Plus, it’s safe to say a fifty-percent Napalm Death would probably be more auditorily vicious and violent than a majority of bands. That’s not a knock on other acts, but a testament to Napalm Death’s consistently unhinged output.

For Greenway, it’s the best way to express himself while impacting others.

“I always looked at it like it’s a lifelong opportunity that I’ve been given, and I’m just trying to make the most of it,” he concludes. “Just get out there and do it. Don’t overthink it.”

Napalm Death, with Melvins, Hard-Ons and Dark Sky Burial, 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 27, Summit, 1902 Blake St. Tickets are $48.