Exclusive: Valient Thorr’s Valient Himself Says Napalm Records “Can Go Fuck Themselves”
Last year, perennial MetalSucks favorites Valient Thorr released what is arguably their best record to date, Old Salt. In addition to kicking all kinds of ass, the album was a special one for the band, because it was their debut release for Napalm Records. But according to frontman Valient Himself, Old Salt will also be the band’s last for that label.
Mr. Himself aired his grievances during his interview on this week’s very special 200th episode of The MetalSucks Podcast. Interestingly, the program’s hosts, Brandon and Petar, didn’t ask Valient about the band’s relationship with Napalm — they simply complimented him on Old Salt‘s very high quality. That’s when Valient launched into a bit of a rant:
“It’s unfortunate that we have a label that doesn’t really give a shit about us. Because that record came out August 30th of last year, and we did three tours in Europe around it and this tour right here [the annual Vans Warped Tour] is the first one we’ve done in the States. So it would be nice if we’d had some kind of push from the label… I think it was like one of those… I don’t know if it’s a tax scam or what… but we didn’t sell like ten or fifteen thousand records the first day or something, so they don’t give a damn about us.
“I’m not afraid to say it, we’re speaking about Napalm Records. Everyone in Europe said that they were great, ‘It’s gonna be fantastic, you’re gonna be on this great label.’ Everyone thought that. And they didn’t spend any money to put out any ads [for the album]. They promised us tour support, they didn’t [give us any]. They literally gave us a list of bands of who we should tour with — ‘You do a tour with them you’ll get some support.’ First name on the list [is] Clutch. ‘Hey, you wanna do a tour with Clutch in December?’ ‘Yeah, absolutely!’ We did it. And Clutch’s profile has gotten HUGE in Europe. We toured with them in 2011 and they were big but, now they’re doing 2,500-3,000 cap places and selling them out all over Europe. And that was in Decmember and we did that. And we had to do local shows just to pay for our own airfare and everything because [Napalm] weren’t kicking down anything. And the same with this tour. We’d be killing it on this tour right now… I don’t wanna say I’m completely unhappy because I’m a happy person, I’m not gonna let one thing run me down, but we’d be a lot happier if we weren’t spending every nickel that we made on this tour on our transportation, y’know what I mean? And when you have a label that doesn’t give a shit about you, that’s what happens.”
Valient continued:
“This is our first and last record with them. They can go fuck themselves.”
Valient then went on to bemoan the label’s internal infrastructure and asserted that they wouldn’t even help the group sell merch while on Warped Tour all summer, concluding with these words of advice:
“Any band who listens to this: don’t get involved with Napalm Records, man. Becuase it’s like that old saying: ‘You can make the best record in the world, but if nobody can fucking hear it, did you even make a record?’”
Ouch.
Listen to the entire interview here or below. Remember to subscribe to the MetalSucks Podcast on iTunes, subscribe to our direct feed or download this episode directly. The MetalSucks Podcast is a member of the Jabberjaw podcast network.
